OkCupid gave 3M dating-app photos to facial recognition firm, FTC says

Post by als0 » Tue, Mar 31, 2026, 9:31 PM UTC

andai wrote: post #44

everdrive wrote: post #2

At this point, nearly every online service should be considered hostile. If they can make a small amount of money by compromising your privacy or your identity, they will. If they can make a small amount of money by stealing your attention and addicting you, they will. Are there exceptions? I'm sure. Will I be erring sometimes by being cautious? Definitely. But, there is really not much of an alternative these days.

I want to say "we structured the system like that, right?", i.e. maximize profit at all costs. But it seems to be the natural outcome of the incentives, of an organization made of organisms in an entropy-based simulation. i.e. the problem might be slightly deeper than an economic or political model. That being said, we might see something approximating post-scarcity economics in our lifetimes, which will be very inte…

Post by hamdingers » Tue, Mar 31, 2026, 9:37 PM UTC

als0 wrote: post #51

andai wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to say "we structured the system like that, right?", i.e. maximize profit at all costs. But it seems to be the natural outcome of the incentives, of an organization made of organisms in an entropy-based simulation. i.e. the problem might be slightly deeper than an economic or political model. That being said, we might see something approximating post-scarcity economics in our lifetimes, which will be very inte…

> we might see something approximating post-scarcity economics in our lifetimes Can you elaborate more on this? All I see is growing inequality.

Post by neilv » Tue, Mar 31, 2026, 9:43 PM UTC

Bengalilol wrote: post #42

doodlebugging wrote: post #31

I suspect that instead of them "giving" the photos to the facial recognition firm they sold them. Those photos and the PII data associated with them are the only things of value that a site like OKCupid controls.

> But even if they had no “commercial agreement,” Zeiler [Clarifai CEO] told the Times that his company gained access to user photos because some of OkCupid’s founders invested in Clarifai. And > In September 2014, the CEO of Clarifai, Inc. e-mailed one of OkCupid’s founders requesting that Humor Rainbow give Clarifai, Inc. (i.e., the Data Recipient) access to large datasets of OkCupid photos. Despite not having any…

Post by bensyverson » Tue, Mar 31, 2026, 9:45 PM UTC

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Mar 31, 2026, 10:02 PM UTC

aitchnyu wrote: post #19

Google GCP updates me with a list of third party subprocessors which potentially interact with my data. All end users of any service should be informed of direct and transitive subprocessors.