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> The change affects more than a third of Facebook’s daily users who had facial recognition turned on for their accounts, according to the company. I'm surpris

> The change affects more than a third of Facebook’s daily users who had facial recognition turned on for their accounts, according to the company. I'm surprise the number is that low. Wasn't enabling this a default? > That meant they received alerts when new photos or videos of them were uploaded to the social network. The feature had also been used to flag accounts that might be impersonating someone else... That's actually a pretty valuable and legitimate use case for such a system, even from a very pro-privacy perspective. > Although Facebook plans to delete more than one billion facial recognition templates, which are digital scans of facial features, by December, it will not eliminate the software that powers the system, which is an advanced algorithm called DeepFace. The company has also not ruled out incorporating facial recognition technology into future products, Mr. Grosse said. It's also almost certainly not going to delete the face-specific image tagging either, which means they could re-derive everything they're "deleting" relatively easily.

drusepth 5y ago
>I'm surprise the number is that low. Wasn't enabling this a default? The first implementation appeared in 2017 [1] as tag suggestions, but the facial recognition feature we know today evolved around 2019, when it was made opt-in rather than a default setting. [2] [1] https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/19/16794660/facebook-facial-recognition-tagging-photos https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/19/16794660/facebook-facial... [2] https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/3/20847650/facebook-facial-recognition-setting-default-opt-in https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/3/20847650/facebook-facial-r...
- jrochkind1 5y ago
  Why does the NYT OP suggests Dec 2010? > The decision shutters a feature that was introduced in December 2010 so that Facebook users could save time. The facial-recognition software automatically identified people who appeared in users’...
  - drusepth 5y ago
    I actually have NYT blocked because their reporting has had such shoddy research lately, but I guess they're probably referring to the face-clustering feature for tags where, when you upload an album, they'll cluster all the like-faces to you to let you tag all of them at once [1]. It was released in December 2010 and, AFAIK, is technically only face detection (they didn't suggest whose face it might be for many years), not facial recognition. (They bought facial recognition company Face.com in 2012 and everyone was excited that FB might finally get real recognition). I guess it could be argued that their implementation of face detection ultimately evolved into their current facial recognition systems (see: Ship of Theseus?), or that to a layperson the two technologies might (unfortunately) sound like the same thing. Or maybe I'm just being pedantic; I was just trying to add some historical context to the current, opt-in "facial recognition" feature in my comment above. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/12/facebook-will-start-using-facial-recognition-next-week/68121/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/12/faceb...
    - jrochkind1 5y ago
      No, you're not being pedantic, I appreciate the history, I was just wondering if anyone knew what was what here, after you supplied those citations for much later introduction date. And you supplied some info, thanks! (I don't know why you have to block something for having bad reporting, but we don't have to talk about that!)
      - drusepth 5y ago
        Thanks, glad I could assist! (Haha, always trying to take back a few seconds/minutes in the day. I find blackholing links to a few websites that get linked often, but aren't often worth reading, helps with that. :) )
        jrochkind1 5y ago
        I'm still seeing things that suggest they really did deploy this in 2010 though... were they press-releasing more than they were actually doing in 2010? June 2011... > “When you or a friend upload new photos, we use face recognition software . . . to match your new photos to other photos you’re tagged in,’’ Justin Mitchell, a Facebook engineer, said in a Facebook blog. “We group similar photos together and, whenever possible, suggest the name of the friend in the photos.’’ http://archive.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2011/06/09/privacy_group_targets_facebook/ http://archive.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2011/...
sulam 5y ago
I turned it off because the "default" use case seemed rather to be to boost their engagement because someone you know socially would upload a picture of something they did that happened to have you in it. That would lead to you being tagged and getting notified, presumably to talk about how much fun you all had or whatever it was. Unfortunately it's pretty useless to ask people to not upload pictures that you're present in, and FB used notifications essentially just to get you to open the app and re-engage. I turned off everything that generated useless notifications for a while, then I finally turned off notifications completely.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  Everything in FB is centered around the use case of boosting their engagement. That's pretty much the only metric they steer by.

drusepth 5y ago

>I'm surprise the number is that low. Wasn't enabling this a default? The first implementation appeared in 2017 [1] as tag suggestions, but the facial recognition feature we know today evolved around 2019, when it was made opt-in rather than a default setting. [2] [1] https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/19/16794660/facebook-facial-recognition-tagging-photos https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/19/16794660/facebook-facial... [2] https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/3/20847650/facebook-facial-recognition-setting-default-opt-in https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/3/20847650/facebook-facial-r...

jrochkind1 5y ago
Why does the NYT OP suggests Dec 2010? > The decision shutters a feature that was introduced in December 2010 so that Facebook users could save time. The facial-recognition software automatically identified people who appeared in users’...
- drusepth 5y ago
  I actually have NYT blocked because their reporting has had such shoddy research lately, but I guess they're probably referring to the face-clustering feature for tags where, when you upload an album, they'll cluster all the like-faces to you to let you tag all of them at once [1]. It was released in December 2010 and, AFAIK, is technically only face detection (they didn't suggest whose face it might be for many years), not facial recognition. (They bought facial recognition company Face.com in 2012 and everyone was excited that FB might finally get real recognition). I guess it could be argued that their implementation of face detection ultimately evolved into their current facial recognition systems (see: Ship of Theseus?), or that to a layperson the two technologies might (unfortunately) sound like the same thing. Or maybe I'm just being pedantic; I was just trying to add some historical context to the current, opt-in "facial recognition" feature in my comment above. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/12/facebook-will-start-using-facial-recognition-next-week/68121/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/12/faceb...
  - jrochkind1 5y ago
    No, you're not being pedantic, I appreciate the history, I was just wondering if anyone knew what was what here, after you supplied those citations for much later introduction date. And you supplied some info, thanks! (I don't know why you have to block something for having bad reporting, but we don't have to talk about that!)
    - drusepth 5y ago
      Thanks, glad I could assist! (Haha, always trying to take back a few seconds/minutes in the day. I find blackholing links to a few websites that get linked often, but aren't often worth reading, helps with that. :) )
      - jrochkind1 5y ago
        I'm still seeing things that suggest they really did deploy this in 2010 though... were they press-releasing more than they were actually doing in 2010? June 2011... > “When you or a friend upload new photos, we use face recognition software . . . to match your new photos to other photos you’re tagged in,’’ Justin Mitchell, a Facebook engineer, said in a Facebook blog. “We group similar photos together and, whenever possible, suggest the name of the friend in the photos.’’ http://archive.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2011/06/09/privacy_group_targets_facebook/ http://archive.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2011/...

sulam 5y ago

I turned it off because the "default" use case seemed rather to be to boost their engagement because someone you know socially would upload a picture of something they did that happened to have you in it. That would lead to you being tagged and getting notified, presumably to talk about how much fun you all had or whatever it was. Unfortunately it's pretty useless to ask people to not upload pictures that you're present in, and FB used notifications essentially just to get you to open the app and re-engage. I turned off everything that generated useless notifications for a while, then I finally turned off notifications completely.

jacquesm 5y ago
Everything in FB is centered around the use case of boosting their engagement. That's pretty much the only metric they steer by.