Facebook’s image outage reveals how the company’s AI tags your photos • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook’s image outage reveals how the company’s AI tags your photos

#11

Post by mevile » Thu, Jul 04, 2019, 7:05 AM UTC

sdrothrock wrote: post #10

mevile wrote: post #8

This stuff is in the HTML, you can see it with web inspector, or I think just by hovering your mouse over the image because that looks like it's in the title attribute for the image. This isn't it like something new was exposed inadvertently. I'm surprised The Verge wrote an article about this.

I think it's less about "look at these [creepy] things" and more about "hey guys, you saw all this text when Facebook broke, this is what it is." At least, that's how a lot of my non-tech friends seem to be taking it.

It's creepy on Facebook, but with any cloud photo storage, like Amazon's or Microsoft's, being able to search for "ocean" or "plants" in your own photos is really fucking cool.

Re: Facebook’s image outage reveals how the company’s AI tags your photos

#12

Post by _Wintermute » Thu, Jul 04, 2019, 7:10 AM UTC

Maybe I'm used to my slow internet connection, but I've been seeing these tags before the images load for a couple of years now - I thought it was common knowledge.

Re: Facebook’s image outage reveals how the company’s AI tags your photos

#13

Post by furyofantares » Thu, Jul 04, 2019, 7:14 AM UTC

Lots of comments about how this isn’t new, or how it’s related to accessibility. The article mentions all this. That’s not what the story is. It’s not a very deep story, but I don’t think it’s quite so trivial as is being suggested.

The story is about this info being exposed to users just browsing the site, and the reaction that elicits. Someone seeing the tags inline in their feed by a glitch will tend to have a very different response than someone who is asked to view source and look for it.

I believe this is relevant because a regular conversation around here centers around the idea that many folks in tech circles find it creepy or unhealthy for society to have so much info being collected and processed for profit by giant corporations, and how most people outside of tech circles seem not to care at all.

Re: Facebook’s image outage reveals how the company’s AI tags your photos

#14

Post by likpok » Thu, Jul 04, 2019, 7:17 AM UTC

SpaceInvader wrote: post #4

This is nothing new, I've noticed that several months ago and talked about that with one of my security friends and he confirmed that Facebook is tagging pictures at least since 2016.

Here's the announcement, even: https://code.fb.com/ios/under-the-hood-building-accessibilit...

Re: Facebook’s image outage reveals how the company’s AI tags your photos

#15

Post by codepie » Thu, Jul 04, 2019, 7:21 AM UTC

There's also an extension which overlay the alt tags over images: https://github.com/ageitgey/show-facebook-computer-vision-ta...

Re: Facebook’s image outage reveals how the company’s AI tags your photos

#16

Post by GrumpyNl » Thu, Jul 04, 2019, 7:26 AM UTC

mevile wrote: post #8

This stuff is in the HTML, you can see it with web inspector, or I think just by hovering your mouse over the image because that looks like it's in the title attribute for the image. This isn't it like something new was exposed inadvertently. I'm surprised The Verge wrote an article about this.

This is what i see, when i inspect a element in ff.

.d8888b. 888 888 d88P Y88b 888 888 Y88b. 888 888 This is a browser feature intended for "Y888b. 888888 .d88b. 88888b. 888 developers. If someone told you to copy-paste "Y88b. 888 d88""88b 888 "88b 888 something here to enable a Facebook feature "888 888 888 888 888 888 Y8P or "hack" someone's account, it is a Y88b d88P Y88b. Y88..88P 888 d88P scam and will give them access to your "Y8888P" "Y888 "Y88P" 88888P" 888 Facebook account. 888 888 888

See https://www.facebook.com/selfxss for more information.

Re: Facebook’s image outage reveals how the company’s AI tags your photos

#17

Post by sdan » Thu, Jul 04, 2019, 7:27 AM UTC

_Wintermute wrote: post #12

Maybe I'm used to my slow internet connection, but I've been seeing these tags before the images load for a couple of years now - I thought it was common knowledge.

Same here!

Re: Facebook’s image outage reveals how the company’s AI tags your photos

#18

Post by 9HZZRfNlpR » Thu, Jul 04, 2019, 7:41 AM UTC

_Wintermute wrote: post #12

Maybe I'm used to my slow internet connection, but I've been seeing these tags before the images load for a couple of years now - I thought it was common knowledge.

Things like that often come as a shock to normal users when they actually see or realize the amount of knowledge these companies have. The big silicon valley companies are literally peeping toms that the society yet tolerates.

Re: Facebook’s image outage reveals how the company’s AI tags your photos

#19

Post by gaucheph » Thu, Jul 04, 2019, 7:44 AM UTC

it's not about what it means for this community, where we all know the shortcut to the dev console in chrome. this is about regular users of Facebook having their own "they live" moments on social media. where they can see plainly how Facebook regards them as consumers. "oh just show him pictures of DRINK and TEXT, that's all he's into anyways".

Re: Facebook’s image outage reveals how the company’s AI tags your photos

#20

Post by s188 » Thu, Jul 04, 2019, 7:49 AM UTC

furyofantares wrote: post #13

Lots of comments about how this isn’t new, or how it’s related to accessibility. The article mentions all this. That’s not what the story is. It’s not a very deep story, but I don’t think it’s quite so trivial as is being suggested. The story is about this info being exposed to users just browsing the site, and the reaction that elicits. Someone seeing the tags inline in their feed by a glitch will tend to have a ver…

I agree with your point entirely but I wonder if more people outside of tech would care if only they understood what these companies were doing with their personal data.