Facebook just loosened the leash a little on its facial-recognition algorithms. Starting Tuesday, any time someone uploads a photo that includes what Facebook thinks is your face, you’ll be notified even if you weren’t tagged.
The new feature rolled out to most of Facebook’s more than 2 billion global users this morning. It applies only to newly posted photos, and only those with privacy settings that make an image visible to you. Facebook users in Canada and the European Union are excluded. The social network doesn’t use facial-recognition technology in those regions, due to wariness from privacy regulators.
Just a heads up.
…in the EU and Canada people can upload pictures of you and you will never know?
Somehow EU doesn’t look like it got the best deal here!
Edited 2017-12-19 19:29 UTC
Is there a saying that what you do not know will not hurt you?
Actually, it seems that you may appear in a posted photograph but your face will not be be tagged automatically by Facebook if you are a resident of Canada or the EU. That’s quite important as the absence of such tags prevents a fully positive identification.
Not really, as the presence of such tags also prevents positive identification. Just because you are tagged in a post, whether by a user or automated system, does not prove that it is you in that post.
So in other words, anyone could still be uploading images of me and I wouldn’t be aware if they don’t want me to be?
I would say face palm, but that’s not strong enough somehow. Aside from Facebook’s data mining, what use is this so-called feature? It sure as hell isn’t awareness or user privacy.
Now granted, in my specific case, people can upload all the pictures of me they want and I still won’t know because… I don’t have Facebook and sure don’t want it.
Edited 2017-12-19 19:44 UTC
I’m sure they’re using other metrics, like geographic location and friend-circle to cut down on false-positives, but I hope there are a lot of them anyway.
Creepiness aside, it might be fun to see who out there in the world looks enough like me to fool the algorithm.
At large enough network sizes, false positives and false negatives become statistically inevitable. The more samples a classification system needs to distinguish between, the less difference there is between the identifying features of those samples.
The only solution is to add more unique data points (like an iris bitmap), but given the limited data/resolution of uploaded photos, this may not be very effective. I predict they’ll have a lot of false positives (or false negatives) unless they use other metrics like you say.
Facebook doesn’t actually have proof of who the uploaded face photos belong to. So if this feature lets you track other images that appear to show your face, then logically someone else could be using this to track photos of you as well.
From what I understand, only the user “tagged” in the photograph(s) gets notified of the post (if laws and privacy settings allows it).
Now, if I am a famous person, and an amateur paparazzi posts photographs in which I appear, would the paparazzi just “block” me so that I am not notified?
Also, if my ex desires to embarrass me in my circle of colleagues and friend, could he/she posts photographs without me being aware by “blocking” me so that I am not notified?
It is unclear is Facebook has thought it through from these angles.
I think this isn’t so much Facebook’s fault. This is the fault of the EU. Facebook is trying to stay out of trouble by being purposefully ignorant about people in pictures.
Facebook has been doing that for 6 years now. What part is new?
Edited 2017-12-19 23:54 UTC
kind of double-edged sword, we can track our own picture while others can do this as well. Good or bad?
they bin doin this for years, its how their whole business model works, by creating and maintaining networks that describe your private life so they can better flog to advertisers…
don’t like it, don’t use it – frankly I have better things to do with my life than feed someone’s private commercial database on and off all day…
To counter the EU paranoia, this feature isn’t necessarily a bad thing. My kids will know who is posting pics that they might be in, either knowingly or unknowingly, and then can choose to block said pics from being shown on their timeline.
The next feature that should be added is the ability for the photo subject To block the picture from being posted altogether.