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Facebook plans to shut down its facial recognition system

nytimes.com

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Re: Facebook plans to shut down its facial recognition system

#171

Post by rootusrootus »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #161
rootusrootus wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or... maybe HN is composed of different people with different viewpoints. A useful concept for people to remember as it applies everywhere. Particularly as we get drawn into tribal politics, it would be better for people to remember that the opposition is not uniform and consists of many different viewpoints. For someone who wants to be divisive, it is trivial to cherry pick examples of bad behavior ("hypocritical"…

Why pretend? If you genuinely believe it, the confirmation bias is likely to keep you from thinking about it enough to assess whether it's true. (Do you regularly re-assess whether the sky is blue, or whether you're wearing clothes? It's just there, background knowledge.)

You are probably right, many people aren't pretending. They really do think their opponents are a monoculture. Convenient, I suppose, critical thinking takes effort.

Re: Facebook plans to shut down its facial recognition system

#172

Post by bGl2YW5j »

mkl95 wrote: post #62
SavantIdiot wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where does apple do it? They do it in iPhoto but it is based on what you tell it, and is opt out. Where else?

I only know about FaceID.

Face ID data is stored in an encrypted section of the iPhone's hardware and not transmitted:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208108 https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/security/sec59b0b31ff/...

Re: Facebook plans to shut down its facial recognition system

#173

Post by zelon88 »

jonas21 wrote: post #123
IAmGraydon wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Or... maybe HN is composed of different people with different viewpoints. People are more motivated to comment when they're upset about something, so it ends up looking like everyone here hates everything big tech does, when it may be that a small number of people hate decision X, a small number of people hate decision Y, and most people either like them or don't care. You often hear complaints that big tech drives p…

This. The biggest example I can think of to prove your point is Microsoft.

To provide a personal anecdote; I don't like using Microsoft products and always look for an open-source, unixy replacement when at home. I complain about Microsoft (products, economy, & policy) at almost every opportunity. And in the same breath I will wholeheartedly recommend the same Microsoft product that I personally wouldn't use to a client in need. The ubiquity and quality of Microsoft products is too significant to ignore. If I were to recommend one of my neckbeard alternatives I would certainly get support calls about it all the time.

But if you only ever went by my social media posts you would think I absolutely hate Microsoft and vehemently refuse to use their products. That's not the case. I just don't get excited enough about Microsoft as a business to go parroting their marketing and waving their flag. The good balances the bad enough that I stay with the brand, but human negativity bias still exists and I've got to complain. The product is too ubiquitous to ignore.

Re: Facebook plans to shut down its facial recognition system

#174

Post by baybal2 »

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.

> The facial recognition feature is how I figured out someone was doxxing and harassing me on their page.

What would you do if you think that somebody who harassed, and doxed you were working at Facebook, or Google?

Re: Facebook plans to shut down its facial recognition system

#175

Post by ipaddr »

aaaaaaaaaaab wrote: post #131
bhhaskin wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is an interesting question. Is it at that point your data? Wouldn't it be the data of who ever took the photo? Why would it belong to you just because you are in the photo? I think giving users power over auto tagging make sense. But giving users power over other people's photos is a terrible idea.

I think it’s basic courtesy to ask someone if they want their picture taken or not. This would only automate the process.

That wouldn't be possible in many cases. True courtesy would be paying them.

Re: Facebook plans to shut down its facial recognition system

#177

Post by seoulmetro »

ddoolin wrote: post #13

Slightly off-topic but I deleted my Instagram yesterday. I was really holding out for one person who almost refuses to talk to me on any non-FB property but...oh well. I'm glad to be rid of it, but I can't shake that it's somewhat meaningless and I'll miss the many content creators I followed who have earned my business. I wonder if there's some way to follow them in a way not tied to my identity.

Create a new Instagram account and follow them? Instagram is anonymous.

Re: Facebook plans to shut down its facial recognition system

#178

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: Facebook plans to shut down its facial recognition system

#179

Post by [deleted] »

drusepth wrote: post #135
romanhn wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, you know, these are different people with different values and different sets of experience.

And also, I'm sure the goalposts have moved a lot in the 3-5 years since this feature was announced. At the time, facial recognition was almost sci-fi levels of absurd to envision, especially at scale. Nowadays, anyone can do their own facial recognition on laptop-level GPUs from freely-available open source software and every site that can use it, probably does use it in some form. It's a lot more normalized now tha…

[deleted]

Re: Facebook plans to shut down its facial recognition system

#180

Post by jrochkind1 »

drusepth wrote: post #133
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'm surprise the number is that low. Wasn't enabling this a default? The first implementation appeared in 2017 [1] as tag suggestions, but the facial recognition feature we know today evolved around 2019, when it was made opt-in rather than a default setting. [2] [1] https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/19/16794660/facebook-facial... [2] https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/3/20847650/facebook-facial-r...

Why does the NYT OP suggests Dec 2010?

> The decision shutters a feature that was introduced in December 2010 so that Facebook users could save time. The facial-recognition software automatically identified people who appeared in users’...

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