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Facebook Re-enables Tag Suggestions Face-Recognition Feature In the US
An anonymous reader writes "Facebook has brought back its photo Tag Suggestions feature to the U.S. after temporarily suspending it last year to make some technical improvements. Facebook says it has re-enabled it so that its users can use facial recognition 'to help them easily identify a friend in a photo and share that content with them.' Facebook first rolled out the face recognition feature across the U.S. in late 2010. The company eventually pushed photo Tag Suggestions to other countries in June 2011, but in the US there was quite a backlash. Yet Facebook doesn't appear to have made any privacy changes to the feature: it's still on by default."
A camera really can steal your soul.
Facebook is a good idea taken way too far and a userbase that refuses to acknowledge that fact. If we've learned anything from history, people are more than willing to go along with anything that even includes physical assault for the sake of recognition. A little violation of privacy is no sweat.
If computers were people, I'd be a misanthrope.
Perception causes me to believe that this "feature" is a double-edged sword. On the one side, it adds to the whole "social networking" thing. Find friends, recognize friends, connect with friends.
On the other hand, it is a massive crowdsourced facial recognition system that is incredibly difficult to stay away from, even if you refuse to be a part of Facebook (IIRC people can tag you in a picture by typing in your name). It's a f*cking privacy nightmare.
But what do you have to hide, huh? *grin....sigh*
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
So, what's wrong with face recognition on Facebook? How does this violate my privacy?
If it screws up and pastes my name on someone that looks like me?
If I never gave permission for my photo be used for commercial purposes?
If I don't want my name plastered all over the Internet?
If I no longer use facebook and wish to have nothing to do with it anymore?
I do not get why you think you should have the right to share photos of me without my permission. Especially with Facebook.
If the FBI had access to Facebook's database during the days of COINTELPRO, it is doubtful the American Civil Rights movement would have ever occurred.
Facial recognition is an amazingly powerful tool for law enforcement when it comes to political adversaries -- imagine a scenario where local police and the FBI could just pop a photo into the special "Law Enforcement" console on Facebook, and find out who the person is, who their friends are, what their likes/dislikes are, what they order online (what kind of ads are targeted), etc.
It's also sad that most young activists these days are all over Facebook and have been giving it all their information since they turned 13 (or earlier if they just ignored that 13+ stuff), so by the time they become involved, the government has an easy way to find out literally everything about their personal lives. Just upload a picture of them snapped at some political rally, and voila!
The problem is Facebook is so addictive, I see such compulsive behavior clicking photos, and when you block facebook on networks, users downright have panic attacks.
Sounds like George Orwell may have been right: We love big brother.
Facebook's servers do not (at least should not) have freedom of speech. Since it is an algorithm that is doing the recognition it could easily place my name on someone doing something I do not approve of.
If a person does something it may be an innocent mistake, and it is likely that that person actually knows me. The software does not know me, so it might not recognize subtle difference in between me and say a twin brother,or cousin, or doppleganger.
Why don't you log in and start sharing your screen name?
well not for nothing if someone else took the photo you really have no ownership to you being in the photo. (unless its commercial of course) Not that I disagree with you, especially on your other points, but if I take a photo, and you are in it, you have no right to tell me what i can or cannot do with it, UNLESS i am getting paid off it
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
It's for your own good, too. Lookit, the press release says so.
You are using that photo as payment for facebook's services. Therefore it IS a commercial transaction.
You do not have my permission to use it as such. Show the photo to your friends, to your family, donate it for a good purpose. I do not want my photo being used by Facebook. I am vehemently opposed to their business model, and I do not like the fact that they would "own" my image at that point. Placing my name on it, especially automatically and potentially incorrectly just makes it worse.
How can I remove tags, if I no longer have an account? How do I find out that I am even auto-tagged?
sorry but legally you are wrong. If I take a photo of you, i am allowed to do whatever I want with it, including posting it on FB, 4chan etc. I can give it to a newspaper for free, I can even post it on a billboard for free. I may not agree with it however it is the law, how do you think paparazi get to do what they do? do you really think britney spears gave her ok to gawker or whoever to post up photos of her vagina? I doubt it.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Also I am not using a photo for payment, Did I have to post the photo to use FB? no , i didnt, therefore it is not payment
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Privacy may be incorrect but reputation certainly isn't given that potential employers are increasingly using the damned thing for evaluation purposes. And you can only remove the tags IF you have an account and are aware of the tag.
It has everything to do with commercial purposes. You are forgetting that FB is nothing more than a data warehouse that they use to aggregate then sell to advertisers. If tagging allows them to combine you with someone else that is valuable data whether you are on FB or not.
It is an outrage and Google does provide a means of "removing" yourself from their searches unlike FB. Once you are tagged, bagged on FB there is no way to get unassociated from their data aggregation. Everything from your political views to favorite color is evaluated, cataloged and stored forever for later re-evaluation for its potential to make FB money. That, after all, is why they exist.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
How exactly is your privacy "invaded" by having a photo of you tagged as you automatically instead of manually?
You mean, aside from the fact that:
- I never gave permission for my image to be placed online,
- I was never asked by either facebook or the person posting the image if I was OK with it,
- The photos that other people put up of you may show you in an unflattering light, or doing something illegal, or supporting/protesting a policy/organization that your employer would take issue with, and thus impact your personal and/or professional life (just ask Micheal Phelps about that one)
- the possibility that the algorithm isn't perfect, and thus may accidentally start tagging, say, all pictures of hypodermic needles (or something equally questionable) with my name?
Other than those things and probably several others that I haven't thought of yet, no, no privacy invasion at all...
Contrary to what the social network profiteers want you to think, celebrities are not the only people who have a right to decide how and where their image is used.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
sorry but legally you are wrong. If I take a photo of you, i am allowed to do whatever I want with it, including posting it on FB, 4chan etc. I can give it to a newspaper for free, I can even post it on a billboard for free. I may not agree with it however it is the law, how do you think paparazi get to do what they do? do you really think britney spears gave her ok to gawker or whoever to post up photos of her vagina? I doubt it.
That's not universally true - pictures taken in a public space, like a park or on a street, yes, you can "do what you want" like the paparazzi do - that's how they get away with vag shots on celebrities, by taking the picture from a public street or sidewalk.
However, if the photo is taken candidly, i.e. on private land, or any setting in which there is an expectation of privacy, then no, you do not have the right to "do whatever you want with it." If you want to test this, feel free to walk into the dressing room of any clothing retailer, snap a few pics, then post them online.
We'll see you in 5-10.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Also I am not using a photo for payment, Did I have to post the photo to use FB? no , i didnt, therefore it is not payment
Read the EULA - by agreeing to it, you are saying that you want a facebook account, and in exchange (i.e., payment), you will let them have universal rights to all media you post therein.
Granted, IANAL, but I don't think you have to be one to understand how slimeball capitalists operate.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
FB doesn't matter ("stuff that matters", and all that, ya know). Just sayin'. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!!!!111
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
well sure if we want to get to that point, clearly we were both talking about normal photos and not private photos. If you are at a party hitting a bong and I take a photo of you I can post that photo without issues, ask Micheal Phelps.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
If you are at a party hitting a bong and I take a photo of you I can post that photo without issues, ask Micheal Phelps.
...
I think I'm just going to sit back and let this one sink in on its own...
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
In sum, if someone looking at a photograph would think that the person in it is promoting or endorsing a commercial product affiliated with the photograph, then the use is commercial. But since it sometimes is difficult to know if the use will be considered commercial or editorial, it's always a safer to get the model release.
I do not wish to endorse or promote the idea that I use or approve of the use of facebook. http://www.photoattorney.com/2006/02/commercial-vs-editorial-use-of.html
We've got about zero chance of changing facebook policies. Nearly zero chance of legislatively stopping it either (and then there will be plenty of exceptions for "law enforcement" that will just make it so that only the very powerful can abuse these tools).
But what you can do is to pollute their database. Garbage In, Garbage Out.
Tag people with the wrong names. Each photo of the same person, tag it with a different name. Or, if you have a lot of photos, use the same (wrong) name a couple of times, before switching it up. That makes it so they can't just throw out all the one-offs. You can also go the other way - upload photos of strangers and tag them with the names of your friends (and yourself).
It ain't perfect, nothing ever is. But facial recognition ain't perfect either, if we can put enough noise into their database, it will make it impractical. At least impractical to be used against you and your friends. Unfortunately, those who blithely use it without concern are just going to have to live with the consequences. For those people, its the online equivalent of giving a gun to a toddler. But until some people actually die as a result, no way facebook will ever be held accountable for such reckless disregard for the welfare of their users.
PS - I am NOT looking forward to "google glasses" becoming ubiquitous and building facial recog databases of everybody in view of the wearers. Even if google doesn't know your name, they do know location, time and the faces of everybody near you. Enough of that sort of data and they can narrow down your identify pretty well.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.