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

151–160 of 196 posts

Re: Facebook plans to shut down its facial recognition system

#151

Post by telchar »

IAmGraydon wrote: post #116
zbowling wrote: post #21

The facial recognition feature is how I figured out someone was doxxing and harassing me on their page. Getting the notification that it thinks I appeared in a photo they had ripped from my FB profile was the tip off. I have mixed feelings.

HN is bizarre sometimes. When this feature first appeared, everyone acted like it was the coming of the Antichrist. Now it’s going away and people have “mixed feelings”. I think people just love to hate big tech no matter what they’re doing.

I don't think there's a need to be confused here. Parent liked it when the tool empowered them, but most people don't like when tools give others power - potentially power over them. The difference in like/hate is in how the tool is deployed.

If the only use of facial recognition on Facebook were to track how one's own image is used I don't think many people would be upset. But allowing someone else to find every image one appears in is a different and scarier thing.

Re: Facebook plans to shut down its facial recognition system

#152

Post by sonicanatidae »

IAmGraydon wrote: post #116
zbowling wrote: post #21

The facial recognition feature is how I figured out someone was doxxing and harassing me on their page. Getting the notification that it thinks I appeared in a photo they had ripped from my FB profile was the tip off. I have mixed feelings.

HN is bizarre sometimes. When this feature first appeared, everyone acted like it was the coming of the Antichrist. Now it’s going away and people have “mixed feelings”. I think people just love to hate big tech no matter what they’re doing.

>I think people just love to hate big tech no matter what they’re doing.

Or, maybe companies have proven again and again and again and again and again that not only can they not be trusted with your data, but they don't secure it, because profits.

Re: Facebook plans to shut down its facial recognition system

#154

Post by cbtacy »

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 liabilities and penalties.

Re: Facebook plans to shut down its facial recognition system

#155

Post by zamalek »

captainmuon wrote: post #50

So sad that we can't have nice things. I like the feature that automatically tags people in pictures. Sometimes I have trouble remembering people's names (not face blindness or similar, just regular trouble I guess). I would love to have smart glasses that show the name of someone I've met before but don't quite remember. But alas, our society being what it is people will abuse facial recognition, so I can't have tha…

> I like the feature that automatically tags people in pictures.

Yeah, when it first launched I thought "this is what facial recognition is for," completely oblivious to the privacy concerns.

In a world where privacy wasn't exploited:

A photo album that automatically finds you in other people's photos is really awesome. Imagine you went to a concert and your phone died, there would likely be dozens of photos with you in the frame. You could likely amass a treasure trove of unexpected perspectives of your memories, from complete strangers.

Fun ideas that are completely incompatible with reality...

Re: Facebook plans to shut down its facial recognition system

#156

Post by wizzwizz4 »

mirkules wrote: post #67
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What do you mean by FB/Twitter proxies? Is it what it sounds like, service to access FB/Twitter in some kind of anonymous mode? And could you name a few?

Yes. There's https://nitter.net/ for Twitter. Can't remember the Facebook one, or the other Twitter one. There's also https://teddit.net/ (and another one) for Reddit.

Re: Facebook plans to shut down its facial recognition system

#158

Post by sulam »

tablespoon wrote: post #8

> The change affects more than a third of Facebook’s daily users who had facial recognition turned on for their accounts, according to the company. I'm surprise the number is that low. Wasn't enabling this a default? > That meant they received alerts when new photos or videos of them were uploaded to the social network. The feature had also been used to flag accounts that might be impersonating someone else... That's…

I turned it off because the "default" use case seemed rather to be to boost their engagement because someone you know socially would upload a picture of something they did that happened to have you in it. That would lead to you being tagged and getting notified, presumably to talk about how much fun you all had or whatever it was. Unfortunately it's pretty useless to ask people to not upload pictures that you're present in, and FB used notifications essentially just to get you to open the app and re-engage. I turned off everything that generated useless notifications for a while, then I finally turned off notifications completely.

Re: Facebook plans to shut down its facial recognition system

#159

Post by whimsicalism »

drusepth wrote: post #129
captainmuon wrote: post #50

So sad that we can't have nice things. I like the feature that automatically tags people in pictures. Sometimes I have trouble remembering people's names (not face blindness or similar, just regular trouble I guess). I would love to have smart glasses that show the name of someone I've met before but don't quite remember. But alas, our society being what it is people will abuse facial recognition, so I can't have tha…

I've also been eagerly awaiting a feature that'd notify me if I ever showed up in a stranger's photos (at concerts, travelling, etc). I know FB has the technology but the feature apparently never materialized. There's a lot of useful stuff you can do when people stop abusing that stuff.

pimeyes can do this

Re: Facebook plans to shut down its facial recognition system

#160

Post by sixothree »

YetAnotherNick wrote: post #71
ben_jones wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The system no longer provides FB the same value it previously did. So they're taking it down, now that they've collected billions of images. Will they be deleting the trained models too? All artifacts and inferences? Hell no.

"the social network will delete the face scan data of more than one billion users." I believe it because facebook has nothing much to gain by lying about this small thing(after all they still have all the tracking data) and hell lot to loose by lying this straight face among employees.

Not. It does _not_ say "all users". Additionally, there's a lot of weasel words.

It does not say they've stopped doing facial recognition. It just says they've shut down one program.

They also specifically reference the "usage" of facial recognition, not the act of facial recognition.

My guess is they are still being paid by governments to collect this data but are just not exposing it.

Post reply on HN