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Facebook Filed a Patent To Predict Your Household's Demographics Based On Family Photos (buzzfeednews.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from BuzzFeed News: Facebook has submitted a patent application for technology that would predict who your family and other household members are, based on images and captions posted to Facebook, as well as your device information, like shared IP addresses. The application, titled "Predicting household demographics based on image data," was originally filed May 10, 2017, and made public today. The system Facebook proposes in its patent application would use facial recognition and learning models trained to understand text to help Facebook better understand whom you live with and interact with most. The technology described in the patent looks for clues in your profile pictures on Facebook and Instagram, as well as photos of you that you or your friends post.
It would note the people identified in a photo, and how frequently the people are included in your pictures. Then, it would assess information from comments on the photos, captions, or tags (#family, #mom, #kids) -- anything that indicates whether someone is a husband, daughter, cousin, etc. -- to predict what your family/household actually looks like. According to the patent application, Facebook's prediction models would also analyze "messaging history, past tagging history, [and] web browsing history" to see if multiple people share IP addresses (a unique identifier for every internet network). A Facebook spokesperson said in response to the story, "We often seek patents for technology we never implement, and patents should not be taken as an indication of future plans."
It would note the people identified in a photo, and how frequently the people are included in your pictures. Then, it would assess information from comments on the photos, captions, or tags (#family, #mom, #kids) -- anything that indicates whether someone is a husband, daughter, cousin, etc. -- to predict what your family/household actually looks like. According to the patent application, Facebook's prediction models would also analyze "messaging history, past tagging history, [and] web browsing history" to see if multiple people share IP addresses (a unique identifier for every internet network). A Facebook spokesperson said in response to the story, "We often seek patents for technology we never implement, and patents should not be taken as an indication of future plans."
When image recognition gets really good, you can get even more info than is laid out here - you can probably nearly 100% recognition of any brands worn or displayed prominently.
You could probably guess really well how much a family makes by knowing the brands of clothes they generally wear, and what kinds of cars they drive...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Just had a second thought - apply that to photos everywhere in general. Now you don't just know the demographics of a family, but of every neighborhood in every city on Earth thanks to geotagged photos from all over the place. You can see what parts of town are driving 2011 Honda Civics and where are the brand new Mercedes. Even if you yourself never post a single photo on Facebook and avoid being tagged, just your address alone will fit into some neat demographic slot that will say everything about you you did not want to reveal.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"We often seek patents for technology we never implement, and patents should not be taken as an indication of future plans."
That sounds suspiciously like proudly admitting to being a patent troll.
It's time to start actively creating misinformation on one's social media presence. Since we can't protect our personal information from these Big Brother wannabe's, we have to at least degrade its reliability, and therefore its value.
I wonder how long will it be before those idiots who proudly proclaim "If you use Facebook, you deserve what you get" have their noses rubbed in the fact that owning a cell phone and being friends with anybody who does have a Facebook profile is enough to hand them quite a lot of personal information.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
So you're saying this was the one step too far for you? They weren't creeps already?
"We often seek patents for technology we never implement, and patents should not be taken as an indication of future plans."
This is absolutely correct for many tech corporations. If you can preempt an innovation that would benefit someone else, you are a step ahead; even if you never use the patent. The most important feature of patents is not that you can make new and better products; it is that you can prevent others from doing that [unless they are willing to pay you for the right].
Of course Fb could use this idea to generate profit. That doesn't change the correctness of the above statement.
...omphaloskepsis often...
Accusations of racism in 3... 2...
Well, the 1 never happened. You get far more whining on slashdot about accusations of racism than you get actual accusations of racism.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
My dad was quite upset when he called from his million dollar home ..[and] customer service representative suggested that the poor reception might be from the metal roof on his mobile home... You see he lived his life paying everything in cash or with store credit.. He never had a credit card because he never needed one. When he got a cell phone they had no credit history ..
Someone once did a spoof of the Duke of Edinburgh applying for a credit card. He was refused because :
Unemployed
Lives on state support
Status depends on wife
Doesn't own a home [state provides one - or several actually]
No fixed address [moves between different castles and palaces]
No previous credit card
And no spending history whatsoever [his flunkies do his purchases]