While Scale is very good at marketing, I wonder if companies using scale ai genuinely understand how their data is being labeled. They have been completely obfuscating that they primarily do crowdsourcing through https://remotasks.com/. The brand of remotasks is entirely different than scale ai for apparent reasons. I don't think major companies would opt in for crowdsourcing if they knew it. There are plenty of managed labeling service providers who provide a guarantee that the labelers come to a facility without phones to label data. There's a reason why they exist.
How did Roomba-recorded photos end up on Facebook?
71–80 of 148 posts
Re: How did Roomba-recorded photos end up on Facebook?
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here's a funny bit. Roomba iOS app refuses to go past its welcome screen unless its granted access to the location info. This is unreasonable, they don't need this info for their app to function. However their devices are all but unusable without an app, so they ultimately blackmail people into giving location data to them. Meaning they don't really give a sh#t about users' privacy, so it's not that "they are watchin…
And, so, did you do the right thing and return it or did you just accept and therefore effectively indicate to Roomba by your actions that you're ok with it? I've returned several "smart" devices that required an app and an account. One example is GoVee smart blubs. As soon as they refused to work without an account I sent them back. Another is some Meross smart outlets. I retuned them for Eve Energy outlets.
An approach that has worked for me is to ensure that any smart devices I buy are supported by Tasmota. I just flash the Tasmota firmware as step-1, then pair the devices with HomeAssistant. Doesn't necessarily send the direct message that returning it does, but at least I can avoid the unnecessary telemetry/tracking.
Re: How did Roomba-recorded photos end up on Facebook?
#73Re: How did Roomba-recorded photos end up on Facebook?
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
No. Out of spite I took the iPad to a friend's house, enabled location, clicked through the welcome screen and disabled it again. Then came back home and hooked up the device. So, no, it's not linked to its BT needs at all.
How did you connect your device to your wireless network?
Friend clearly didn't live very far away
Re: How did Roomba-recorded photos end up on Facebook?
#75Key paragraph for our friends who don’t RTFA > iRobot … confirmed that these images were captured by its Roombas in 2020. All of them came from “special development robots with hardware and software modifications that are not and never were present on iRobot consumer products for purchase,” the company said in a statement. They were given to “paid collectors and employees” who signed written agreements acknowledging…
Oh a spokesperson said that? Must be true then. No spokesperson has ever pulled something like that out of their arse.
Re: How did Roomba-recorded photos end up on Facebook?
#76> Milagros Miceli, a sociologist and computer scientist who has been interviewing distributed workers contracted by data annotation companies for years. Miceli has spoken to multiple labelers who have seen similar images, taken from the same low vantage points and sometimes showing people in various stages of undress.
> The data labelers found this work “really uncomfortable,” she adds.
This is an interesting point - the article seems to present that this was not done out of malice (as the woman's face was pre obscured).
> Labelers discussed Project IO [another assignment by Scale] in Facebook, Discord, and other groups that they had set up to share advice on handling delayed payments, talk about the best-paying assignments, or request assistance in labeling tricky objects.
It's clearly against policy,
> But such actions are nearly impossible to police on crowdsourcing platforms.
> When I ask Kevin Guo, the CEO of Hive, a Scale competitor that also depends on contract workers, if he is aware of data labelers sharing content on social media, he is blunt. “These are distributed workers,” he says. “You have to assume that people … ask each other for help. The policy always says that you’re not supposed to, but it’s very hard to control.”
I'm honestly not that suprised that something like this happened, where similar things happen for mturk.
1. Society demands this kind of automation 2. Companies reacting to this demand have to hire humans to perform manual labelling 3. Humans that perform labelling don't always follow the rules and policies in place 4. Data leaks occur 5. Article like this are written 6. Demands for automation don't really change
(repeat)
Re: How did Roomba-recorded photos end up on Facebook?
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
How did you connect your device to your wireless network?
Friend clearly didn't live very far away
And therefore the location was within range of the WiFi network, not really netting a privacy gain, if at all? Especially since SSID databases exist and are used for more accurate location detection.
Re: How did Roomba-recorded photos end up on Facebook?
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you read the article you'll also find the owners were specifically aware that these units are special in that they upload all data - commercial devices do not share any images or video without the users consent [0]. It's also absurd to think they didn't face safeguards. We can only speculate if the individual was fired, or if stronger policies were put in place since 2020, but it's naive to expect that whatever po…
> If you read the article you'll also find the owners were specifically aware that these units are special in that they upload all data Well, you'll find a Roomba spokesperson saying that, anyway. I don't mean to imply that the spokesperson was lying and these were plain old roomba's instead of special R&D Roomba's. I do mean to imply that I think a roomba spokesperson would describe "included in paragraph 12 of a 23…
As well as the spokesperson from Scale. The evidence provided to the author also strongly cooborates this fact. Seeing reviews of their commercial devices, they're pretty clear about what is and is not uploaded, with nothing visual uploaded be default.
Therefore I don't agree with your implication as I just don't see any evidence to support it. Even the article's author, with the evidence they were given doesn't push this point.
Re: How did Roomba-recorded photos end up on Facebook?
#79Roomba is the company that planned on using their vacuum cleaners to map people's houses so they could sell that data to third parties. https://nypost.com/2017/07/25/roomba-maker-wants-to-sell-you... Considering that this is how poorly they protect the sensitive data their devices collect (even those used for development purposes) I guess it's a good thing that public backlash over their spying plans forced them to r…
There was a huge backlash to this. There was the potential for thieves to find out the layout of someone’s home and when it was unoccupied. Add cameras to that and you have a disaster waiting to happen.
Re: How did Roomba-recorded photos end up on Facebook?
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Quoted post unavailable.
Can you elaborate? I disagree with OP that 3 was the the most egregious event, I agree that it's questionable for the article to use the two specific images containing people so plainly and without further censorship, perpetuating the invasion of privacy for the sake of a more captivating article. 3. The MIT Technology Review gets a hold of these images and decides to publish them on the Internet for everyone to see,…
The two pictures that include people have their faces removed. Yes they contain people, they don't contain a useful way to connect the photo to any real person. I suppose if you are that person you could recognize yourself. Appears to be in Asia from the TV set contents.
"Just to get more clicks on their article" reads to me as a flame on media, I don't detect that motivation.
If that was me on the toilet I'd be pissed at Roomba and their trust in bogus contractors, but since you can't tell it's me I don't really care. Maybe that's just me.