Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook plans to shut down its facial recognition system

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 196 posts

Re: Facebook plans to shut down its facial recognition system

#181

Post by jrochkind1 »

marwis wrote: post #147
skybrian wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's kind of a radical position. People shouldn't take photos of crowds in public places? You want veto power over that?

Not radical enough. It should be an opt-in rather opt-out. A public website should verify that every person on the photo consented to being publicly displayed. Otherwise their faces should be pixelated. I can certainly see things going that way in EU within a decade.

I don't want every public website (and who else?) to have access to the perceptual hash of my face to identify it in uploaded pictures to ask me for opt-in.

Re: Facebook plans to shut down its facial recognition system

#182

Post by lossolo »

skybrian wrote: post #84
ryandrake wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The privacy cat is already out of the bag once someone uploads a photo of you without your consent. That's the root behavior that should be corrected, and it's hard because the onus is on the privacy-conscious user, to get everyone else's cooperation. The facial recognition just adds even more privacy-questionable metadata. My dream facial recognition feature for Facebook would be to allow me, as a non-user of Facebo…

That's kind of a radical position. People shouldn't take photos of crowds in public places? You want veto power over that?

You could just cut out the face from the picture.

Re: Facebook plans to shut down its facial recognition system

#183

Post by drusepth »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #180
drusepth wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm surprise the number is that low. Wasn't enabling this a default? The first implementation appeared in 2017 [1] as tag suggestions, but the facial recognition feature we know today evolved around 2019, when it was made opt-in rather than a default setting. [2] [1] https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/19/16794660/facebook-facial... [2] https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/3/20847650/facebook-facial-r...

Why does the NYT OP suggests Dec 2010? > The decision shutters a feature that was introduced in December 2010 so that Facebook users could save time. The facial-recognition software automatically identified people who appeared in users’...

I actually have NYT blocked because their reporting has had such shoddy research lately, but I guess they're probably referring to the face-clustering feature for tags where, when you upload an album, they'll cluster all the like-faces to you to let you tag all of them at once [1].

It was released in December 2010 and, AFAIK, is technically only face detection (they didn't suggest whose face it might be for many years), not facial recognition. (They bought facial recognition company Face.com in 2012 and everyone was excited that FB might finally get real recognition).

I guess it could be argued that their implementation of face detection ultimately evolved into their current facial recognition systems (see: Ship of Theseus?), or that to a layperson the two technologies might (unfortunately) sound like the same thing. Or maybe I'm just being pedantic; I was just trying to add some historical context to the current, opt-in "facial recognition" feature in my comment above.

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/12/faceb...

Re: Facebook plans to shut down its facial recognition system

#184

Post by benrapscallion »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #17
ddoolin wrote: post #13

Slightly off-topic but I deleted my Instagram yesterday. I was really holding out for one person who almost refuses to talk to me on any non-FB property but...oh well. I'm glad to be rid of it, but I can't shake that it's somewhat meaningless and I'll miss the many content creators I followed who have earned my business. I wonder if there's some way to follow them in a way not tied to my identity.

There are several Facebook and Twitter proxies; perhaps there's an Instagram proxy with an RSS feed?

There are: just Google “instagram bridge”. I use one of them - a bit slow but fine otherwise.

Re: Facebook plans to shut down its facial recognition system

#185

Post by jrochkind1 »

drusepth wrote: post #183
jrochkind1 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does the NYT OP suggests Dec 2010? > The decision shutters a feature that was introduced in December 2010 so that Facebook users could save time. The facial-recognition software automatically identified people who appeared in users’...

I actually have NYT blocked because their reporting has had such shoddy research lately, but I guess they're probably referring to the face-clustering feature for tags where, when you upload an album, they'll cluster all the like-faces to you to let you tag all of them at once [1]. It was released in December 2010 and, AFAIK, is technically only face detection (they didn't suggest whose face it might be for many year…

No, you're not being pedantic, I appreciate the history, I was just wondering if anyone knew what was what here, after you supplied those citations for much later introduction date. And you supplied some info, thanks!

(I don't know why you have to block something for having bad reporting, but we don't have to talk about that!)

Re: Facebook plans to shut down its facial recognition system

#186

Post by unsungNovelty »

jjj123 wrote: post #141
drusepth wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really breaching someone's privacy to assist your own memory of the things they've chosen to (repeatedly) tell you?

I think the breach of privacy is giving an almost trillion dollar corporation free training data via my face and name combination. I don’t mind an individual knowing this information, but I’d rather that individual not hand that data over to a megacorp that has a million other unknown uses for it.

This is true. But in your point I assume you are talking about the company who is doing the facial recognition I assume. But that is not the case really. Even if the person uses a home grown tech, the person can eventually share it to another dataset.

A good example is me refusing to share my photo with my friends for that app which turns you into an old guy. Another friend just out of spite shared a personal photo he has of me. Now my photo is in this Russian database which does data mining.

For better privacy, you being careful is not enough. You need to make sure everyone around you are privacy oriented. And we need to make systems that make that happen. Opt in privacy is not effective.

Re: Facebook plans to shut down its facial recognition system

#187

Post by KennyBlanken »

Vrondi wrote: post #89
skybrian wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's kind of a radical position. People shouldn't take photos of crowds in public places? You want veto power over that?

In the USA at least, there is no legal expectation of privacy on a public street. So, for news reporting purposes, you can publish photos of a crowd in public. However, as soon as you step onto private property, this changes. Even at places like shopping malls and stores, the owner of that place can take your photo for security, but cannot publish it, and it is not kosher for photographers to take photos of customers…

> In the USA at least, there is no legal expectation of privacy on a public street.

Depends on the state. In Massachusetts, for example, expectation of privacy doesn't matter. What matters is whether the recording was secret or not. Note that "secret" doesn't mean "the subject knew", it means "the subject could have known." If you're walking around with a zoom lens and a camera taking pictures of someone a block away who has no idea? Not secret. If you're in front of me with a camera hidden in your tie pin? Secret.

Security camera on the side of the building? Not secret. Security camera hidden on the side of the building made to look like a bird's nest? Secret.

> So, for news reporting purposes, you can publish photos of a crowd in public.

There's generally much wider latitude for use of a person's image in relation to press coverage of a newsworthy event.

> However, as soon as you step onto private property, this changes.

Not in Massachusetts, where secretly recording someone is illegal, period.

> it is not kosher for photographers to take photos of customers in these settings and publish them without getting a signed model release form the subject of the photo

Publishing is not a very relevant term. People have a right to control "commercial use" of their image.

Re: Facebook plans to shut down its facial recognition system

#188

Post by f7f8rurjfi »

bellyfullofbac wrote: post #169
slownews45 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can only be suggested as a name for someone else's photo if you've turned face recognition on. "If you’d like other people to see tag suggestions for you, you’ll need to turn on your face recognition setting." So you need to opt in to it to let others tag you.

But how does it know that "This is slownews45's face, so don't show any auto-tag recommendation for it."..?

What's it like being able to hold 2k karma despite being racist?

Re: Facebook plans to shut down its facial recognition system

#189

Post by f7f8rurjfi »

bellyfullofbac wrote: post #168
antegamisou wrote: post #42

A legitimate question I’ve always had when we read such announcements is how can we be certain they’re actually doing whatever they’re claiming / planning to do. Unlike software /OS modifications, it’s not feasible to somehow reverse engineer FB’s backend and find out if anything unusual is happening. At least without any attempt of compromising it. Considering how powerful these orgs are, with low probability of fac…

Nowadays there's enough dissent inside FB itself (according to news articles), that if they lied about this, someone from the inside will probably leak/whistleblow about it...

What's it like being able to hold 2k karma despite being racist?

Re: Facebook plans to shut down its facial recognition system

#190

Post by zimpenfish »

cbtacy wrote: post #154
advisedwang wrote: post #92

It seems this is likely a result of the 2019 FTC Consent Order on Facebook [1]. Facebook has had to implement privacy processes which are monitored by a 3rd party who reports to a judge and facial recognition was one of the issues sparking the order. The consent agreement [2] has whole sections and rules specifically for facial recognition data. Likely a review program and criteria (approved by the monitor) were set…

Thank you. Yes... this is almost certainly happening because of the intersection of the Illinois settlement, the current microscope FB (no, I will not refer to them as M*a) finds themselves under, and the Consent Order that they have almost certainly violated dozens if not hundreds of times in the last few years. They've done the risk assessment, and they're reducing the risk profile in order to decrease potential li…

> (no, I will not refer to them as M*a)

Surely, if anything, that should be "M&a".

Post reply on HN