Facebook turned on face recognition silently

I'm imaging a Probability Zero or Black Mirror short where Facebook insists some scammer is using your face and attempts to shut them down. They are unable to log into services because they used Facebook login for convenience. In the end, it turns out the imposter randomly had an identical face and was perhaps a long list twin.

This is not arbitrary. There is a clear upside: the ability to quickly find all pictures of a person, either by that person themselves or by other people. The benefit provided by this feature has to be weighed against its potential for harm in order to decide whether it is a permissible use of technology or not.

To be honest, facebook should have gathered consent in a GDPR-compliant way: opt-in. But IMHO the feature isn't bad in and of itself. Even recognizing people not on facebook isn't necessarily wrong, as long as facebook isn't building a profile of that person (but merely doing the equivalent of recognizing bananas in all of someone's pictures so they can do a search for banana.)

But given the value provided by the feature, again I ask: what is the harm you're afraid of?

Facebook's literal book of faces will be used by law enforcement to establish/verify alibi, establish/verify presence at the scene of a crime, etc.

These tools, no doubt, are being built out with heavy support from the State.

You won't do it alone, but if most of your friends start doing that, either you mess up their training dataset by introducing a lot of noise, or you all will get flagged as outliers. Both situations are win comparing to learned helplessness one might fall into when realizing the ways how this data can be misused.

I'm a woman, so different situation, but I took most photos of me offline at some point. Later, I began putting up new ones, but it was handled differently. There are more than two photos of me, but there aren't tons. I actually like being photographed, or did in my youth. But I don't like having photos of me all over the internet.

Years ago, I joined an all female Yahoo group that was a spin off from a parenting and homeschooling list I had been active on. I put up a photo of me on my yahoo profile that was in no way intended to be sexy. My long standing friends in this small group of 20 members wanted to know what I looked like and it was for them.

Within 24 hours, I was being solicited by some 19 year old total stranger who lived within an hour of my home who wanted to know if I would sleep with him. My oldest child was 16.

I laughed and my reply clearly signalled that I was laughing in his face and he did not write back. But it did not stop there. Other men would write me and go into graphic detail as to how they would like to spend the next 3 day weekend in bed with me. The only thing they knew about me was what I looked like. That was it.

At some point, I pulled all photos of me off the internet that I had any control over. The only remaining photos were taken by internet friends at a meet-up and were quite unflattering. I later found that a relative who was cyberstalking me while not speaking to me had those photos bookmarked. This was a creepy experience.

There are photos of me out there. Some are not hideous. But I make zero effort to look conventionally attractive. One photo of me online is of me with a shaved head. I am prone to posting photos that are intended to tell people stalking me "Hey, stupid. I am old and ugly and you can stop fantasizing about me."

It hasn't stopped men from hitting on me. But it has been a few years since a total stranger who knew nothing about me other than what I look like has written me to let me know what a pig he is in glorious detail.

I intentionally kept a fairly low profile online for some time. Nonetheless, my super low levels of internet fame still fostered all kinds of weird interest from people who are not healthy and absolutely did not have my best interest at heart. If I had more fame, I would probably be super paranoid controlling. People do all kinds of bizarre things and photos are an excellent way to fuel the weirdness. It makes people feel like they know you, have a personal connection yadda.

I have worked really hard at figuring out how to open my mouth in public and feel reasonably safe doing so. Being penurious with the pics has been an important part of that process. People are quick to objectify people based on a photo. You stop being a real person in their mind and become a symbol of something. It may be a symbol they lust after. It may be a symbol they hate. It may be any number of things. But they will forget you are a real person. They seem to be much less quick to do that based on written comments.