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

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

#52

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…

That is an incredibly charitable interpretation of the word "reveal" in the headline. Every piece of information can be "revealed" to someone by that definition, it's happening all the time, and it wouldn't be a newsworthy event.

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

#53

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.

Slow internet connection or 150+ tabs open in browser? :)

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

#54
>> Everyone knows the bit in The Matrix when Neo achieves digital messiah status and suddenly sees “reality” for what it really is: lines of trailing green code.

Given that the Matrix was a simulation, what it "really is" can't have been trailing green code. What it "really is" must have been electric charges stored in memory circuits. What Neo saw was his own mind's interpretation of the software and hardware underlying the Matrix.

Though of course the point about the green text is that it was a spiffy effect, and not a supposedly accurate representation of what computer memory "looks like".

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

#55
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Note: You can do this in Apple's Photos.app and the analysis is done 100% locally on your computer.

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

#56
post #42

It’s funny how what purely is an accessibility feature done to help “differently advantaged folks” (how these journalists would say) is being turned against them by the media. Reminds me how they are vilifying open APIs and explaining them as a way Facebook “gives away your data”.

Reading some of the comments right here, it’s interesting watching some eat it right up and go right along with it.

Facebook is doing a lot with user data I have serious problems with. An accessibility feature like his probably ranks dead last or close to it.

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

#57

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.

This always surprises me. How can you live today not understanding/predicting the vast scale of corporate/social media analytics...?

If major hedge funds are monitoring parking lots with satellite cameras you can bet damn well facebook is using image recognition in its targeting

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

#58
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes I believe the number of users on facebook would drop incredibly quickly

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

#60

>> Everyone knows the bit in The Matrix when Neo achieves digital messiah status and suddenly sees “reality” for what it really is: lines of trailing green code. Given that the Matrix was a simulation, what it "really is" can't have been trailing green code. What it "really is" must have been electric charges stored in memory circuits. What Neo saw was his own mind's interpretation of the software and hardware underl…

I believe the green text is also taken from a recipe book but the designer won't reveal which one.
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