5 ms·

The facial recognition feature is how I figured out someone was doxxing and harassing me on their page. Getting the notification that it thinks I appeared in a

The facial recognition feature is how I figured out someone was doxxing and harassing me on their page. Getting the notification that it thinks I appeared in a photo they had ripped from my FB profile was the tip off. I have mixed feelings.

IAmGraydon 5y ago
HN is bizarre sometimes. When this feature first appeared, everyone acted like it was the coming of the Antichrist. Now it’s going away and people have “mixed feelings”. I think people just love to hate big tech no matter what they’re doing.
- jonas21 5y ago
  Or... maybe HN is composed of different people with different viewpoints. People are more motivated to comment when they're upset about something, so it ends up looking like everyone here hates everything big tech does, when it may be that a small number of people hate decision X, a small number of people hate decision Y, and most people either like them or don't care. You often hear complaints that big tech drives people to extreme viewpoints through algorithms. But the natural human algorithm of putting more effort into the negative than the positive seems to lead to the same outcome.
  - cecilpl2 5y ago
    This is also why it's much more valuable to look at user metrics than actual feedback when making design decisions. Individual pieces of feedback can be valuable, but if you let it do the driving then you can end up making changes that worsen your product. You become subject to the will of the most vocal critics at any given moment.
    - Karunamon 5y ago
      Be careful with this advice, though. Writing off feedback, as Mozilla does, can blow up in your face as you dismiss any and all criticism as being from a vocal minority of whiners.
  - rootusrootus 5y ago
    > Or... maybe HN is composed of different people with different viewpoints. A useful concept for people to remember as it applies everywhere. Particularly as we get drawn into tribal politics, it would be better for people to remember that the opposition is not uniform and consists of many different viewpoints. For someone who wants to be divisive, it is trivial to cherry pick examples of bad behavior ("hypocritical") by pretending that those you disagree with must all share exactly the same priorities and opinions.
    - wizzwizz4 5y ago
      Why pretend? If you genuinely believe it, the confirmation bias is likely to keep you from thinking about it enough to assess whether it's true. (Do you regularly re-assess whether the sky is blue, or whether you're wearing clothes? It's just there, background knowledge.)
      - rootusrootus 5y ago
        You are probably right, many people aren't pretending. They really do think their opponents are a monoculture. Convenient, I suppose, critical thinking takes effort.
        wizzwizz4 5y ago
        Yeah. None of my opponents do critical thinking; it's a good thing my lot do.
  - zelon88 5y ago
    This. The biggest example I can think of to prove your point is Microsoft. To provide a personal anecdote; I don't like using Microsoft products and always look for an open-source, unixy replacement when at home. I complain about Microsoft (products, economy, & policy) at almost every opportunity. And in the same breath I will wholeheartedly recommend the same Microsoft product that I personally wouldn't use to a client in need. The ubiquity and quality of Microsoft products is too significant to ignore. If I were to recommend one of my neckbeard alternatives I would certainly get support calls about it all the time. But if you only ever went by my social media posts you would think I absolutely hate Microsoft and vehemently refuse to use their products. That's not the case. I just don't get excited enough about Microsoft as a business to go parroting their marketing and waving their flag. The good balances the bad enough that I stay with the brand, but human negativity bias still exists and I've got to complain. The product is too ubiquitous to ignore.
- romanhn 5y ago
  Or, you know, these are different people with different values and different sets of experience.
  - drusepth 5y ago
    And also, I'm sure the goalposts have moved a lot in the 3-5 years since this feature was announced. At the time, facial recognition was almost sci-fi levels of absurd to envision, especially at scale. Nowadays, anyone can do their own facial recognition on laptop-level GPUs from freely-available open source software and every site that can use it, probably does use it in some form. It's a lot more normalized now than it was.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- darthvoldemort 5y ago
  Actually your comment is pretty bizarre. You're distilling your impressions from thousands of people into a single sentence, and then you're taking a single person's response and using that to push your agenda that "people just love to hate big tech". It's fascinating that you think this is a valid observation on your part.
- baryphonic 5y ago
  Is there any one single representative of "HN" as a body of opinions?
- m0zg 5y ago
  I think assuming malice on the part of Zuck is a good default. It's as in that blockbuster movie "no matter who wins, you lose". The only winning move is not to play.
- ike0790 5y ago
  lmao
- telchar 5y ago
  I don't think there's a need to be confused here. Parent liked it when the tool empowered them, but most people don't like when tools give others power - potentially power over them. The difference in like/hate is in how the tool is deployed. If the only use of facial recognition on Facebook were to track how one's own image is used I don't think many people would be upset. But allowing someone else to find every image one appears in is a different and scarier thing.
- sonicanatidae 5y ago
  >I think people just love to hate big tech no matter what they’re doing. Or, maybe companies have proven again and again and again and again and again that not only can they not be trusted with your data, but they don't secure it, because profits.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  Utilitarian arguments are a bad base for a discussion that is primarily about ethics.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
5faulker 5y ago
But then, it's probably FB that facilitated that kind of behavior, so more mixed feelings.
- eptcyka 5y ago
  Now there's one less tool to help the victim of such abuse though.
  - azinman2 5y ago
    This comment to me shows that it’s impossible to keep the public happy. HN likes to rail on all these big tech companies amassing and abusing data, and here as they go deleting one of the most Orwellian parts it gets complaints.
  - ysavir 5y ago
    It's not that there's one less tool. It's that the tool given to begin with was wrong for that purpose, and instead of leveraging the technology in beneficial ways, they're removing it. They could have implemented in the account settings somewhere where you can let it alert you for any such usage of your face, but without it doing any auto-tagging or other publicly visible things which we usually complain about.
  - numpad0 5y ago
    Knowing outlines of how online harassment happens, I'm confident it would do far more harm than help in this context. Weaponized autism is real.
baybal2 5y ago
> The facial recognition feature is how I figured out someone was doxxing and harassing me on their page. What would you do if you think that somebody who harassed, and doxed you were working at Facebook, or Google?

IAmGraydon 5y ago

HN is bizarre sometimes. When this feature first appeared, everyone acted like it was the coming of the Antichrist. Now it’s going away and people have “mixed feelings”. I think people just love to hate big tech no matter what they’re doing.

jonas21 5y ago
Or... maybe HN is composed of different people with different viewpoints. People are more motivated to comment when they're upset about something, so it ends up looking like everyone here hates everything big tech does, when it may be that a small number of people hate decision X, a small number of people hate decision Y, and most people either like them or don't care. You often hear complaints that big tech drives people to extreme viewpoints through algorithms. But the natural human algorithm of putting more effort into the negative than the positive seems to lead to the same outcome.
- cecilpl2 5y ago
  This is also why it's much more valuable to look at user metrics than actual feedback when making design decisions. Individual pieces of feedback can be valuable, but if you let it do the driving then you can end up making changes that worsen your product. You become subject to the will of the most vocal critics at any given moment.
  - Karunamon 5y ago
    Be careful with this advice, though. Writing off feedback, as Mozilla does, can blow up in your face as you dismiss any and all criticism as being from a vocal minority of whiners.
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  > Or... maybe HN is composed of different people with different viewpoints. A useful concept for people to remember as it applies everywhere. Particularly as we get drawn into tribal politics, it would be better for people to remember that the opposition is not uniform and consists of many different viewpoints. For someone who wants to be divisive, it is trivial to cherry pick examples of bad behavior ("hypocritical") by pretending that those you disagree with must all share exactly the same priorities and opinions.
  - wizzwizz4 5y ago
    Why pretend? If you genuinely believe it, the confirmation bias is likely to keep you from thinking about it enough to assess whether it's true. (Do you regularly re-assess whether the sky is blue, or whether you're wearing clothes? It's just there, background knowledge.)
    - rootusrootus 5y ago
      You are probably right, many people aren't pretending. They really do think their opponents are a monoculture. Convenient, I suppose, critical thinking takes effort.
      - wizzwizz4 5y ago
        Yeah. None of my opponents do critical thinking; it's a good thing my lot do.
- zelon88 5y ago
  This. The biggest example I can think of to prove your point is Microsoft. To provide a personal anecdote; I don't like using Microsoft products and always look for an open-source, unixy replacement when at home. I complain about Microsoft (products, economy, & policy) at almost every opportunity. And in the same breath I will wholeheartedly recommend the same Microsoft product that I personally wouldn't use to a client in need. The ubiquity and quality of Microsoft products is too significant to ignore. If I were to recommend one of my neckbeard alternatives I would certainly get support calls about it all the time. But if you only ever went by my social media posts you would think I absolutely hate Microsoft and vehemently refuse to use their products. That's not the case. I just don't get excited enough about Microsoft as a business to go parroting their marketing and waving their flag. The good balances the bad enough that I stay with the brand, but human negativity bias still exists and I've got to complain. The product is too ubiquitous to ignore.
romanhn 5y ago
Or, you know, these are different people with different values and different sets of experience.
- drusepth 5y ago
  And also, I'm sure the goalposts have moved a lot in the 3-5 years since this feature was announced. At the time, facial recognition was almost sci-fi levels of absurd to envision, especially at scale. Nowadays, anyone can do their own facial recognition on laptop-level GPUs from freely-available open source software and every site that can use it, probably does use it in some form. It's a lot more normalized now than it was.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
darthvoldemort 5y ago
Actually your comment is pretty bizarre. You're distilling your impressions from thousands of people into a single sentence, and then you're taking a single person's response and using that to push your agenda that "people just love to hate big tech". It's fascinating that you think this is a valid observation on your part.
baryphonic 5y ago
Is there any one single representative of "HN" as a body of opinions?
m0zg 5y ago
I think assuming malice on the part of Zuck is a good default. It's as in that blockbuster movie "no matter who wins, you lose". The only winning move is not to play.
ike0790 5y ago
lmao
telchar 5y ago
I don't think there's a need to be confused here. Parent liked it when the tool empowered them, but most people don't like when tools give others power - potentially power over them. The difference in like/hate is in how the tool is deployed. If the only use of facial recognition on Facebook were to track how one's own image is used I don't think many people would be upset. But allowing someone else to find every image one appears in is a different and scarier thing.
sonicanatidae 5y ago
>I think people just love to hate big tech no matter what they’re doing. Or, maybe companies have proven again and again and again and again and again that not only can they not be trusted with your data, but they don't secure it, because profits.
jacquesm 5y ago
Utilitarian arguments are a bad base for a discussion that is primarily about ethics.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

5faulker 5y ago

But then, it's probably FB that facilitated that kind of behavior, so more mixed feelings.

eptcyka 5y ago
Now there's one less tool to help the victim of such abuse though.
- azinman2 5y ago
  This comment to me shows that it’s impossible to keep the public happy. HN likes to rail on all these big tech companies amassing and abusing data, and here as they go deleting one of the most Orwellian parts it gets complaints.
- ysavir 5y ago
  It's not that there's one less tool. It's that the tool given to begin with was wrong for that purpose, and instead of leveraging the technology in beneficial ways, they're removing it. They could have implemented in the account settings somewhere where you can let it alert you for any such usage of your face, but without it doing any auto-tagging or other publicly visible things which we usually complain about.
- numpad0 5y ago
  Knowing outlines of how online harassment happens, I'm confident it would do far more harm than help in this context. Weaponized autism is real.

baybal2 5y ago

> The facial recognition feature is how I figured out someone was doxxing and harassing me on their page. What would you do if you think that somebody who harassed, and doxed you were working at Facebook, or Google?