7 ms·

That's the thing with personal pictures online. Most people can't imagine what is going to happen in the future. People on Hacker News well understand this issu

• imgabe 10y ago
  > Even today it's no problem to analyze the Facebook picture of some random person and calculate a chance of that person being an alcoholic in X years based on the number of party pictures they share. The problem is not that this calculation exists, but that people so easily misinterpret it. It doesn't mean "Person with these photos has a 65% chance of being an alcoholic in 5 years", what it REALLY means is "65% of the people with these photos became an alcoholic in 5 years". That is a HUGE difference. For the remaining 35% there is perhaps some additional factor not included in the existence of the photos that guarantees there is a 0% chance of them ever becoming an alcoholic. When you try to apply general statistics about a large population to a single individual, it's not as simple as just saying "65% of the time this person will become an alcoholic". That's ridiculous anyway, because the person will only live one life, one time.
  • logicchains 10y ago
    The calculation is useful from a marketing perspective. If I decide to advertise alcoholism treatments to these people in five years' time, I'll have a lot more success then if I'd just picked people at random to advertise to.
    • phaemon 10y ago
      ..and in the meantime, you can advertise alcohol to these people. It's a win-win! </evil>
  • sbov 10y ago
    This distinction seems relevant only if you target one person, which seems pretty rare. In reality you're going to use this metric on a pool of people, in which case 65% of them would become an alcoholic in 5 years.
    • imgabe 10y ago
      It becomes a problem when it's used for profiling, such as "Don't hire that person, there's a 65% chance they'll be an alcoholic" or "send a drone to kill that person, there's an 80% chance they're a terrorist"
      • sbov 10y ago
        I agree that it's a problem, but your distinction still seems generally pointless. If you have a company policy to not hire alcoholics and you reject 1,000 people based upon this metric then 65% would have been an alcoholic.
        • imgabe 10y ago
          It is a problem for the 350 non-alcoholics who are unable to get a job because the hiring manager doesn't understand statistics.
• mohlerm 10y ago
  So true. And even if you're careful with your own data...some other person might not and upload and tag photos with your name.
  • fixermark 10y ago
    It honestly may be more productive to operate under the mindset of "My private information that is acquirable by a cursory examination of me (this includes face, which is obviously publicly visible) will inevitably find its way online in a way outside my control. What do I do given this reality?"
    • miander2 10y ago
      Exactly. We cannot have any expectation of privacy in public and likewise, we cannot have any expectation of privacy in online social media.
      • germanier 10y ago
        There is a fine line between "somebody who knows me (even if not personally) can recognize me on the street" and "everybody can know everything I do out in public or online"
• nxzero 10y ago
  Easy to exploit this today too and not that uncommon either.
• kardos 10y ago
  That's a really hard battle to fight, even for those of us who understand the full implications. The entire population is not going to drop facebook overnight, it does deliver some sort of value to them despite it's heavy privacy price. I'm beginning to believe that the answer is to simply devalue all that information. We can do it in some contexts on the technical side, for example, rotating passwords devalues stolen credentials, virtual credit cards, random MAC for wireless scanning, etc. So how far can we push this? If you got into my email, but 90% of the messages there were generated by AI and 10% are legit, can you accurately profile me? To get a little more on topic, how close do you think we are to 3D printers that can print a mask of your face? Once that happens, will the value of these "face recognisers" drop off a bit?
  • axx 10y ago
    I have hope that this will change. Because more and more people live a fake life on social media. Some people go crazy and share everything, but more and more people share less[^1] and if they share something, it's only something that holds together their "clean image". 1: http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/7/11387604/facebook-personal-sharing-decline-report http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/7/11387604/facebook-personal-...
    • kardos 10y ago
      Sure, that's a good sign, but it's still undone by someone else who posts a photo or recording of you. If I recall correctly, facebook used to (maybe still does) solicit users to "report" anybody who is not using their real name on the site. When will facebook start soliciting/rewarding users for uploading photos of others? How much does that guy in your class value your personal privacy?
  • bduerst 10y ago
    I think is more phobia about technology than an actual problem. I get that this is a radical view on HN, but when topics like this come up, it's always slippery slopes and fantastic nightmare scenarios (like 3D printing your face). I feel like we're in the 1980's debating over how to handle traffic laws for our flying cars in 2010 just because someone built one.
• aquadrop 10y ago
  What I'm more afraid of, is that if you say that to regular people, they'll answer "So, what?" and keep not thinking of any their online actions.
• weavie 10y ago
  The thing is, under a certain age everyone is doing it. When this current teenage generation grows up and gets into leadership positions - especially politics, they are all going to have their entire upbringing exposed for the whole nation to see. The few that haven't will be viewed with cynicism and will most likely not be accepted by the population. The population will be voting for their leaders based on how they were brought up. It is going to be quite an interesting social phenomenon to witness.
  • user_0001 10y ago
    Didn't seem to effect George W too much
  • redmaverick 10y ago
    That's a good point. But the only generation that's going to be affected is the facebook generation.The current teenage gen will just stick to whatsapp/kik conversations or snapchat and won't advertise themselves like fb gen did.
    • germanier 10y ago
      In that case analyze the photos sent on snapchat or whatever network is cool today. The problem is not only photos posted publicly (though it's most visible there).
  • seren 10y ago
    In a way it is already here, with questions if US presidents have smoked/inhaled pot, if they were drafted or not in Vietnam. I don't believe that it has a huge impact on voters.
  • pavel_lishin 10y ago
    > When this current teenage generation grows up and gets into leadership positions - especially politics, they are all going to have their entire upbringing exposed for the whole nation to see. But that whole generation will be in the same situation. Everyone will have had to deal with it; embarassing/compromising college-era party photos will just be a thing that nearly everyone has dealt with. Decades ago, having had an abortion or a child out of wedlock was a mortal social sin. Today, it doesn't matter.
• aub3bhat 10y ago
  This is an unbelievably ridiculous argument, the government has data on almost entire population thanks to all sort of identification cards and other innumerable sources of data. Why should corporations and other people be denied the same access & privilege. You are spreading pure FUD, out of ignorance and misplaced sense of paternalism. The reality is that most people correctly understand the trade-off between privacy and utility. That's why they share information on social networks. They are not paranoid running around fearing government conspiracy theories. They just want to enjoy their short lives.
  • axx 10y ago
    So what you're saying is, just because our governments collect everything, everybody else should be allowed to do it too, or stop worrying? The fight for privacy is not for us, it's for generations to come.
    • aub3bhat 10y ago
      >> So what you're saying is, just because our governments collect everything, everybody else should be allowed to do it too, or stop worrying? Yes, Strong corporations and public rights, are necessary to ensure, that government does not becomes too powerful. And there is at least some balance of power. >> The fight for privacy is not for us, it's for generations to come. Please define "us"? "us" or "people" or "generations" are rhetorical devices, with little basis in reality. The romantic notion of "people" quickly disappears when those people either organize into corporations or political parties. At certain level Corporations & Governments are people, or aggregate expression of will of the people. The economies of scale necessitates strong corporations which can protect "people" from government and vice versa.
      • axx 10y ago
        By that i mean, that our decisions today, will effect everything that follows. If we educate people that privacy is a privilege, they might not do things (sharing personal information) in the future, that they would otherwise do. And i'm not talking about world-changing stuff here, it's the little things, like sharing very personal information on social media, like my party picture example from above. The problem is, most people don't understand the implecations of their doing. And that's why we, who understand those issues, need to educate them. Another thing is, social media is sold as this warm and cozy place where all your friends are. But in reality, you share your information with big corporations that want to make money (which is totally fine, they provide a service). People just need to understand, that social media is not a private and social environemnt, it's a tool, provided by a company that has (in most ways) no interest in your personal privacy.
• randomgyatwork 10y ago
  To the best of my knowledge, I've removed all the pictures associated with my name from the internet... with the exception of LinkedIn.
  • qaq 10y ago
    Cool none will ever mine LinkedIn for personal data
• nihonde 10y ago
  Two approaches to stave off the inevitable come to mind: 1. Do whatever it takes to be "behind the curtain" and one of the people who is in a position to do the exploiting, rather than being exploited. (It's up to you what you do with that power.) 2. The opposite of signal is noise. The same hackers who build these Big Brother tools will inevitably build the tools that flood Big Brother with noise. Disinformation campaigns will always be capable of re-training the surveillance machine.
• digi_owl 10y ago
  For me the trick seems to be to get people to treat the net as if it was downtown during high noon. Just because you are sitting there typing in your undies do not mean that what you post has the same privacy. Also the worrying bit is not so much the data, as the actions taken on their basis. Denying someone a job because they have a few photos of them enjoying a colorful drink is just the tip of the iceberg. What about the day a kill shot is approved because the computer says the face is above a certain likelihood of being some big bad terrorist? At 70% there is still a 1 in 4 chance of being wrong.
  • qaq 10y ago
    Do you really want to work for a place like that?
    • dangrossman 10y ago
      Employers routinely subject applicants to personality tests, IQ tests, fitness tests for jobs that have nothing to do with manual labor (essentially age/gender discrimination), background checks, credit checks even when the job doesn't involve handling money, and yes, looking them up on social media. Do people really want to work for these places? Yes, because they need to pay their rent, and don't have the nestegg of a well-paid Silicon Valley software developer, or recruiters chasing them to offer them work.
      • qaq 10y ago
        This holds true for 3d world countries in US for 90% of people the only reason to be in this position is one's own choices.
        • nitrogen 10y ago
          The sense of free will is an illusion of physics and consciousness; choices are made by quasi-deterministic electrochemical processes before our conscious minds are ever aware of them.
• ape4 10y ago
  I use fake photo as a profile photo in facebook.