Facebook turned on face recognition silently • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook turned on face recognition silently

#211

Post by _sdegutis » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 4:51 AM UTC

bduerst wrote: post #72

I-M-S wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reply All made an episode on this: https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/109-facebook-spying

They followed up with that person from that episode, and they all determined that it most likely wasn't microphone listening, just cross platform tracking with instagram. https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/113-reply-alls-year-en...

Just tonight we briefly mentioned garage doors and remote garage door openers, and we got an ad on FB for remote car openers. We haven't looked up any of these things online or anything else, it was a brief discussion that lasted all of 1 or 2 minutes, tops. It's definitely not cross platform tracking, it's got to be microphone listening. I advised her to uninstall FB from her phone, because this is getting obnoxiously creepy.

Re: Facebook turned on face recognition silently

#212

Post by horsecaptin » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 6:00 AM UTC

jwilk wrote: post #177

horsecaptin wrote: post #123

Just wanted to point out. IF YOU ARE NOT THE CUSTOMER, THEN YOU ARE THE PRODUCT!

From the HN guidelines: Please don't use uppercase for emphasis. If you want to emphasize a word or phrase, put asterisks around it and it will get italicized.

I'd forgotten that one. Thank you.

Re: Facebook turned on face recognition silently

#213

Post by JKCalhoun » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 6:46 AM UTC

craigsmansion wrote: post #127

bitL wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to fight it, tag them as wrong persons to mess up their training dataset. I am sure they would love that! :) Maybe even start a Facebook group "False positives" where people would do this for fun and to "stick it to the man" lol

If you want to fight it: don't use Facebook ! No matter how much an individual thinks they're resisting or messing with the system, they're not. The only way to win is to not participate.

I won last week then.

Pro tip: if you try to delete your account and your password isn't recognized, re-enter it all lower-case. (Smooth one, FB.)

Re: Facebook turned on face recognition silently

#214

Post by randycupertino » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 8:41 AM UTC

planb wrote: post #114

mfrye0 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen very odd events as well that have convinced me this is happening. Went to a friends house and ending up discussing the most random, very specific topics. 2 of the 3 topics popped up in ads on the way home an hour later. Never searched anything related on my phone prior to then.

Probably your friend did. And Facebook knows you were in the same location. That seems more reasonable than eavesdropping on your conversation...

It happened to me at work recently. I thought this was fake too but my zipper broke on my backpack at work while my coworker and I were walking down a long hallway between offices. We spent the whole walk talking about backpack zippers. When we got to the other office and I looked something up on facebook I had ads for backpack zippers. It was so creepy and neither of us had searched for anything between the conversation and when it showed me the ad. Listening to my mic while I wasn't even in the facebook app was literally the only way they could have known to show me those ads.

Re: Facebook turned on face recognition silently

#215

Post by bartl » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 12:24 PM UTC

I'm OK with this, under the condition that Facebook only uses it to alert you of photos you likely appear in, i.e. those two first examples of what it can do.

I would not allow them to show those results to other people.

Re: Facebook turned on face recognition silently

#216

Post by rmc » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 1:22 PM UTC

jugg1es wrote: post #2

The fact that they notified you means it wasn't exactly silent. I saw this notification and turned it off. I wish it hadn't been opt-out and had been an opt-in thing instead.

Facebook is going to be following the EU's GDPR in a few months, which will probably require opt-in.

Re: Facebook turned on face recognition silently

#217

Post by tekknik » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 3:09 PM UTC

sangnoir wrote: post #167

wpietri wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't the betterness of using friend networks being reduced false positives? Facebook has 2 billion MAU, which means they have a lot of faces. Filtering down to the 50k or so that are close to you means it's much easier to find the right person, rather than a similar stranger.

> Wouldn't the betterness of using friend networks being reduced false positives? They are not limiting to friend networks, otherwise they would not catch (out of network) strangers using your pics. One of the use cases touted is "Help protect you from strangers using your photo"

Also finding images you’re in but may have been taken by someone not on your friends list (think events). Eventually probably recommending friends from these images.

Re: Facebook turned on face recognition silently

#218

Post by sib » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 5:52 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #191

sib wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you "told me" to delete a picture that included you that I had taken in a public place, I would "tell you" no. If you politely asked, I would generally delete the picture, depending on whether or not there was a reason that I felt I wanted the picture and whether or not there was a way to reproduce the picture without you in it. For example, if Bigfoot had run through the frame while I was taking the picture, I'd…

If you took a picture with me accidentally in the frame that would be one thing, and I could not care less about it. If you purposefully made a picture of me and refused to delete it things could get interesting.

In the country where I live (the US), I have every right to take a picture in a public place with you in it, even if you are the primary subject. I can even publish such a picture on a blog, Facebook, Instagram, etc., pretty much anywhere as long as I am not using it for advertising purposes.

I'd be very interested to learn what "things could get interesting" means - as would the police, depending on the definition of "interesting."

Re: Facebook turned on face recognition silently

#219

Post by jastanton » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 8:31 PM UTC

908087 wrote: post #64

jastanton wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an app developer, I don't want to say this is impossible, loading and abusing private libraries has been done in the past. It just seems so unlikely. And it seems like if proved (decrypting network traffic from mobile device?) would destroy Facebook's image w/ customers. I think more than likely the talking about a certain subject makes the ads stand out more than they would have. It's like, researching to buy a n…

> And it seems like if proved (decrypting network traffic from mobile device?) would destroy Facebook's image w/ customers. Would it, though? Facebook gets caught with its pants down standing in front of a row of bent-over users pretty regularly, and for the most part those users seem happy or naive enough to stay where they are, or at best just migrate to other Facebook-owned services like Instagram/WhatsApp.

What are some good examples of that? Specifically something that has malicious intent or an abuse of some TOS. I can think of a number of examples from companies like Uber. But maybe I missed something from Facebook.

Re: Facebook turned on face recognition silently

#220

Post by Slansitartop » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 10:29 PM UTC

squarefoot wrote: post #198

jacquesm wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why I do not want anybody to make any pictures of me, especially not if they are active on social media. There are exactly two pictures of me online, the one is 30 years old, the other about 10. The quickest way to get me pissed off is to point a camera at me.

Same here. For a while when going out with friends and someone wanted to take a group photo I asked if it was being uploaded to Facebook, and in that case I would get out of the camera sight, but then I realized any photo will end up on FB anyway because most people don't give a damn about their and others privacy, so today I don't allow anyone to take photos of myself in any situation, and ask them not to tag me at…

I uploaded hundreds of stock photos to Facebook and tagged myself (and a few friends) in all of them. I even used multiple photos of the same model to try to foil some attempts to filter inconsistencies. I hope to inject enough bad data into their system that it's totally unreliable for my face.