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Facebook machine learning technology improves; Redditors alaramed.

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Re: Facebook machine learning technology improves; Redditors alaramed.

#141

Post by pilgrim689 »

jemfinch wrote: post #121
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #71

Years ago I worked with a guy who used to sell computer equipment to businesses. He told me that when he went to different divisions in each company, they all had org/structure charts somewhere around the office. And in every one of them, their section was in the middle and everybody else was serviced by them. No matter what you did, you were the center of the universe to you. Likewise, I've had experience building a…

> They are becoming the center of the information universe to their customers. This is not a good thing. Why isn't it?

I believe the argument is that having all your information in one service (Google, Facebook,..) is like having all your eggs in one basket.

Then, if the company decides to sell your information, lose it, etc., it's too easy, and you're left empty-handed.

However, I think that if that 1 service makes it possible for you to backup all your information and allows you to remove all the information from their service if you want to, then it shouldn't be a problem... but I might be underplaying their argument...

Re: Facebook machine learning technology improves; Redditors alaramed.

#142

Post by jemfinch »

pilgrim689 wrote: post #141
jemfinch wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are becoming the center of the information universe to their customers. This is not a good thing. Why isn't it?

I believe the argument is that having all your information in one service (Google, Facebook,..) is like having all your eggs in one basket. Then, if the company decides to sell your information, lose it, etc., it's too easy, and you're left empty-handed. However, I think that if that 1 service makes it possible for you to backup all your information and allows you to remove all the information from their service if y…

> However, I think that if that 1 service makes it possible for you to backup all your information and allows you to remove all the information from their service if you want to, then it shouldn't be a problem...

Something like Google's Data Liberation Front? http://www.dataliberation.org/

I put all my eggs in one basket every time I take the family to the grocery store. It's unclear to me why storing all my information with Google is any worse than piling my wife and kids into the Odyssey.

Re: Facebook machine learning technology improves; Redditors alaramed.

#143

Post by henrybridge »

brown9-2 wrote: post #77

Ignoring the how of this new feature, what is the upside to me as a user of confirming to Facebook the hospital in which my child was born? Why do they think people would generally be interested in clicking "Yes" on these suggestions? That they are helpfully filling in the blanks on photos I "forgot" to location-tag?

Disclosure: I work on location products at Facebook.

I think that real world places are an important part of who you are. Where you're from, where you've lived, and where you've travelled to, for instance, all help tell a story about you as a person.

The way that's represented on Facebook today is the Map on your Timeline. These suggestions help you put more photos on your map so you can share experiences with friends. That trip you took to Disney World 5 years ago may be far down in timeline, but it's going to be easy for friends to find it on your Map.

Hope that helps explain the "why" a bit.

Re: Facebook machine learning technology improves; Redditors alaramed.

#144

Post by brown9-2 »

henrybridge wrote: post #143
brown9-2 wrote: post #77

Ignoring the how of this new feature, what is the upside to me as a user of confirming to Facebook the hospital in which my child was born? Why do they think people would generally be interested in clicking "Yes" on these suggestions? That they are helpfully filling in the blanks on photos I "forgot" to location-tag?

Disclosure: I work on location products at Facebook. I think that real world places are an important part of who you are. Where you're from, where you've lived, and where you've travelled to, for instance, all help tell a story about you as a person. The way that's represented on Facebook today is the Map on your Timeline. These suggestions help you put more photos on your map so you can share experiences with friend…

Thanks for the answer.

Re: Facebook machine learning technology improves; Redditors alaramed.

#145

Post by MrRage »

nitrogen wrote: post #124
drats wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, with all the Facebook sharing buttons around the web they have more than your bookmarks too, they have the equivalent of uploading your browser history each day to them. With current machine learning technology, let alone improvements over the coming years, they'd know more or less what someone would know if they stood behind every time you were browsing for the last few years. Even if you were to cancel your…

While people like to think that it's more or less anonymized clusters and demographics that are being passed to advertisers to target ads better - not a terribly scary thought, just more relevant ads - I think we need to be far more cautious. How do you go about convincing the "I have nothing to hide" majority of the population that giving away such vast quantities of information is not in their best interests? I'm t…

I'm not sure how compelling my argument is... but if I have nothing to hide then why does anybody need to look? For example does the TSA seeing everybody naked actually improve security?

Re: Facebook machine learning technology improves; Redditors alaramed.

#146

Post by iamandrus »

brlewis wrote: post #138

This was just answered on Quora: http://www.quora.com/How-does-Facebook-predict-my-photo-albu... Henry F. Bridge, Product Manager, Facebook Photo albums on Facebook have long had a text input field for location, but until recently, there was no way to put in structured data in this field (like a Facebook page). We added that ability earlier this year, and the "add a location" feature just performs a search on whateve…

I uploaded pictures from a class trip on Facebook back in 2009 and had no captions or names that suggested that the pictures were taken in California. My camera at the time was not capable of GPS. Facebook still managed to get the location right.

Scary stuff.

Re: Facebook machine learning technology improves; Redditors alaramed.

#147

Post by boredguy8 »

jemfinch wrote: post #142
pilgrim689 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the argument is that having all your information in one service (Google, Facebook,..) is like having all your eggs in one basket. Then, if the company decides to sell your information, lose it, etc., it's too easy, and you're left empty-handed. However, I think that if that 1 service makes it possible for you to backup all your information and allows you to remove all the information from their service if y…

> However, I think that if that 1 service makes it possible for you to backup all your information and allows you to remove all the information from their service if you want to, then it shouldn't be a problem... Something like Google's Data Liberation Front? http://www.dataliberation.org/ I put all my eggs in one basket every time I take the family to the grocery store. It's unclear to me why storing all my informat…

When you drive, your goals and the goals of everyone else on the road are roughly aligned insofar as you all want to travel from one place to another place quickly and safely. There are pretty rough consequences for those whose goals aren't similarly aligned. So yes, you could be killed by someone else driving drunk, but it's relatively unlikely.

Google's goals and mine aren't aligned at all, except instrumentally. So Google cares about my privacy up to and until it costs them less to not care than to care.

I'm fully in the Google camp, but let's be honest about the fact that we've made a deal with some supernatural being. We just hope it turns out not to be the devil.

Re: Facebook machine learning technology improves; Redditors alaramed.

#148

Post by iradik »

hyperbovine wrote: post #115
iradik wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is how it can be done without any EXIF/GPS data with a fairly dumb algorithm. It's a picture of a baby at a hospital. There are probably hundreds of baby photos being taken per day at that hospital being posted to FB. Some have GPS and some don't. The images that do have GPS, get recognized and lumped together as the same "entity" since they all look the same. FB then looks up where she lives, then looks for any…

A slightly more sophisticated approach would be to use the all /other/ data they have on her to predict what hospital she is likely to choose. Why stop with just her hometown?

Sure let's speculate they have a function that returns a guessed gps coordinate at time t. Again there are dumb implementations for this. Can take a time decaying and time-of-day/day-of-week weighted mode of your recognized locations. I imagine it'd be fairly accurate.

Re: Facebook machine learning technology improves; Redditors alaramed.

#149

Post by sk5t »

pnathan wrote: post #110
tomjen3 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found googles page where they tell you which catagories of things they believe about you (basically age and interests). Some of them where right, but more than half of them was wrong (I am not, for the record, interested in Paleontology).

Can you provide a link? I'm curious now!

Here you go: https://www.google.com/settings/ads/onweb/

Re: Facebook machine learning technology improves; Redditors alaramed.

#150

Post by falling »

jemfinch wrote: post #142
pilgrim689 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the argument is that having all your information in one service (Google, Facebook,..) is like having all your eggs in one basket. Then, if the company decides to sell your information, lose it, etc., it's too easy, and you're left empty-handed. However, I think that if that 1 service makes it possible for you to backup all your information and allows you to remove all the information from their service if y…

> However, I think that if that 1 service makes it possible for you to backup all your information and allows you to remove all the information from their service if you want to, then it shouldn't be a problem... Something like Google's Data Liberation Front? http://www.dataliberation.org/ I put all my eggs in one basket every time I take the family to the grocery store. It's unclear to me why storing all my informat…

Facebook lets you download your data as well: https://www.facebook.com/help/?topic=download

Just wanted to balance the “Facebook evil / Google not evil” diatribe, as when discussing these topics only Google is ever mentioned.

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