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HN user asks a simple and direct question to Facebook's VP of AI: > What are you all doing to allow those of us that don’t want to be a part of your utopia to

HN user asks a simple and direct question to Facebook's VP of AI: > What are you all doing to allow those of us that don’t want to be a part of your utopia to opt out? Answer from Facebook VP of AI: > I encourage you to read the details of the news that doesn't actually answer your question but gives you an idea of how we think I'm glad to see that even on a industry-specific forum like Hacker News, we can't get straight answers from people like this. Giving people "an idea of how we think" seems like a great way to stay vague enough that your thinking can change however it needs to over time to fulfill your business objectives, health or safety of the community be damned. Facebook doesn't need to give us vague "ideas", it needs to provide straightforward answers to straightforward questions. > AI-powered wearables will have stringent privacy guarantees, both for the wearer and the people around. Reading a sentence like this from a Facebook exec completely stretches credulity for me. I have zero confidence that your definition of "stringent privacy guarantees" is anything close to something that actually benefits the community as a whole.

pesenti 5y ago
The question was about opting out of our "utopia", I wouldn't call that a "straightforward question". If you do have a straightforward question, especially about this or another specific project, I can try to provide a straightforward answer.
- thr0wawayf00 5y ago
  Great! How do I make sure that nothing about me ever passes through a Facebook server/ETL job/datalake/neural net/whatever? Can that even be guaranteed? Is Facebook generating a shadow profile on me or using data I've generated either myself or through friends that have taken pictures/videos/etc of me, and if maybe, how do I opt out? Facebook just released Ray Ban smart glasses that don't look any different from standard Ray Bans and don't provide a solid design affordance to communicate to others when they're active, so I don't really get the feeling that Facebook cares at all about who is being swept up in their systems.
  - pesenti 5y ago
    No, that’s not a reasonable assumption. Photos or videos of you are likely on Facebook’s servers, uploaded by friends or others when you are in public. What I can assure you though is that if you are not a user, we are not recognizing you in these pictures and videos. We won’t do that without explicit consent from users.
    - thr0wawayf00 5y ago
      Thanks Jerome, I really do appreciate your answer and I know I'm probably not the most fun person to talk to. I do have a follow-up on this if you'll entertain me: why is it that Facebook stores content of people that it doesn't recognize? Granted, I'm but a lowly web developer, but it seems like creating business logic that automatically removes content with people that aren't Facebook users would be pretty straightforward to implement. You've already solved the hardest part of that problem, the facial recognition, so why not go all the way? Moving forward, you'd have a really simple approach to privacy that's transparent and people understand without needing to get into the weeds. Receiving assurance that I'm not being recognized in photos and videos isn't very comforting when I see Facebook releasing products like the "smart" Ray Bans. Recognizing people in images is only one of many types of data that Facebook gleans from that content, and I don't want anything involving me being processed in any way by that company, whatsoever.
      - still_grokking 5y ago
        > Recognizing people in images is only one of many types of data that Facebook gleans from that content, and I don't want anything involving me being processed in any way by that company, whatsoever. Which is a basic right under GDPR. No private entity is allowed to store or process data about you for their purposes without your consent. Did FB just said they are doing it though?
        zwaps 5y ago
        Of course. FB openly ignores the GDPR and will be happy to pay a fine if the EU manages to ever show enough courage to levy one of significance. Facebook trains its models on your data, in particular your pictures and (in the future) your video - your behavior, voice, face, etc. But feat not, your name will not flow directly in the algorithms (until you sign up an account - and the rest of your data is already there!) And as presenti openly (and quite arrogantly) stated just one post up: There is no conceivable way for you to ever do anything about it, except if FB stops operations of this kind. Which they can't, of course, because it is the very basis of their business model.
pine390 5y ago
This reminds me of the squid game when they say “You signed a disclaimer of physical rights today, didn’t you?”
saiya-jin 5y ago
I mean, what do you expect. This is public forum, he comes honestly unanonymously in front of huge crowd already in very negative mood towards this. You can't be a VP of such a thing in one of the richest companies globally ever, and not know how to play politics and lawyering safely. pesenti - I have respect that you come forward like this and attempting to push mankind's boundaries. Unfortunately, FB is probably the second worst company ever (first could be Palantir) to take on this. I don't trust them a attometer, and never will. Any attempt to change this attitude always ends badly, see ie Carmack. Very mixed feelings is probably the best description I can give.
- thr0wawayf00 5y ago
  I expect that those who have power should bear the responsibility of being asked hard questions and answering them honestly, because a society which discourages us from asking difficult questions of those in power is doomed to fail.
still_grokking 5y ago
> "gives you an idea of how we think" It's the usual trick to be able to say afterwards: "I didn't say that! You just made up some interpretation. I'm not responsible for your interpretation."
dang 5y ago
Please don't attack people like this when they post to HN, regardless of how you feel about their employer. You may not owe $BigCo better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it. When something remains unanswered, it's enough to ask substantive questions respectfully. We don't want HN to be a hostile place that tars-and-feathers people who show up to explain another side of a story—especially not on a topic they know about. For most of us, our work is what we know the most about. Therefore, people showing up to discuss something related to their work are among the highest-value contributors HN can have. We don't want to discentivize that, and attacking them for it goes directly against the mandate of the site. You don't have to agree, obviously, but you do have to stick to the site guidelines. (Btw, that also means that you shouldn't be posting generic-indignant rants here.) https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://hn.algolia.com/?query=disincent%20by:dang&dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?query=disincent%20by:dang&dateRange=... Edit: I just noticed that you got much nicer later in the thread. That's way better—thanks.

pesenti 5y ago

The question was about opting out of our "utopia", I wouldn't call that a "straightforward question". If you do have a straightforward question, especially about this or another specific project, I can try to provide a straightforward answer.

thr0wawayf00 5y ago
Great! How do I make sure that nothing about me ever passes through a Facebook server/ETL job/datalake/neural net/whatever? Can that even be guaranteed? Is Facebook generating a shadow profile on me or using data I've generated either myself or through friends that have taken pictures/videos/etc of me, and if maybe, how do I opt out? Facebook just released Ray Ban smart glasses that don't look any different from standard Ray Bans and don't provide a solid design affordance to communicate to others when they're active, so I don't really get the feeling that Facebook cares at all about who is being swept up in their systems.
- pesenti 5y ago
  No, that’s not a reasonable assumption. Photos or videos of you are likely on Facebook’s servers, uploaded by friends or others when you are in public. What I can assure you though is that if you are not a user, we are not recognizing you in these pictures and videos. We won’t do that without explicit consent from users.
  - thr0wawayf00 5y ago
    Thanks Jerome, I really do appreciate your answer and I know I'm probably not the most fun person to talk to. I do have a follow-up on this if you'll entertain me: why is it that Facebook stores content of people that it doesn't recognize? Granted, I'm but a lowly web developer, but it seems like creating business logic that automatically removes content with people that aren't Facebook users would be pretty straightforward to implement. You've already solved the hardest part of that problem, the facial recognition, so why not go all the way? Moving forward, you'd have a really simple approach to privacy that's transparent and people understand without needing to get into the weeds. Receiving assurance that I'm not being recognized in photos and videos isn't very comforting when I see Facebook releasing products like the "smart" Ray Bans. Recognizing people in images is only one of many types of data that Facebook gleans from that content, and I don't want anything involving me being processed in any way by that company, whatsoever.
    - still_grokking 5y ago
      > Recognizing people in images is only one of many types of data that Facebook gleans from that content, and I don't want anything involving me being processed in any way by that company, whatsoever. Which is a basic right under GDPR. No private entity is allowed to store or process data about you for their purposes without your consent. Did FB just said they are doing it though?
      - zwaps 5y ago
        Of course. FB openly ignores the GDPR and will be happy to pay a fine if the EU manages to ever show enough courage to levy one of significance. Facebook trains its models on your data, in particular your pictures and (in the future) your video - your behavior, voice, face, etc. But feat not, your name will not flow directly in the algorithms (until you sign up an account - and the rest of your data is already there!) And as presenti openly (and quite arrogantly) stated just one post up: There is no conceivable way for you to ever do anything about it, except if FB stops operations of this kind. Which they can't, of course, because it is the very basis of their business model.

pine390 5y ago

This reminds me of the squid game when they say “You signed a disclaimer of physical rights today, didn’t you?”

saiya-jin 5y ago

I mean, what do you expect. This is public forum, he comes honestly unanonymously in front of huge crowd already in very negative mood towards this. You can't be a VP of such a thing in one of the richest companies globally ever, and not know how to play politics and lawyering safely. pesenti - I have respect that you come forward like this and attempting to push mankind's boundaries. Unfortunately, FB is probably the second worst company ever (first could be Palantir) to take on this. I don't trust them a attometer, and never will. Any attempt to change this attitude always ends badly, see ie Carmack. Very mixed feelings is probably the best description I can give.

thr0wawayf00 5y ago
I expect that those who have power should bear the responsibility of being asked hard questions and answering them honestly, because a society which discourages us from asking difficult questions of those in power is doomed to fail.

still_grokking 5y ago

> "gives you an idea of how we think" It's the usual trick to be able to say afterwards: "I didn't say that! You just made up some interpretation. I'm not responsible for your interpretation."

dang 5y ago

Please don't attack people like this when they post to HN, regardless of how you feel about their employer. You may not owe $BigCo better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it. When something remains unanswered, it's enough to ask substantive questions respectfully. We don't want HN to be a hostile place that tars-and-feathers people who show up to explain another side of a story—especially not on a topic they know about. For most of us, our work is what we know the most about. Therefore, people showing up to discuss something related to their work are among the highest-value contributors HN can have. We don't want to discentivize that, and attacking them for it goes directly against the mandate of the site. You don't have to agree, obviously, but you do have to stick to the site guidelines. (Btw, that also means that you shouldn't be posting generic-indignant rants here.) https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://hn.algolia.com/?query=disincent%20by:dang&dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?query=disincent%20by:dang&dateRange=... Edit: I just noticed that you got much nicer later in the thread. That's way better—thanks.