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"You can only turn off this setting 3 times a year." Astonishing. They clearly feel their users have no choice but to accept this onerous and ridiculous requi
by themafia 1y ago
"You can only turn off this setting 3 times a year."
Astonishing. They clearly feel their users have no choice but to accept this onerous and ridiculous requirement. As if users wouldn't understand that they'd have to go way out of their way to write the code which enforces this outcome. All for a feature which provides me dubious benefit. I know who the people in my photographs are. Why is Microsoft so eager to also be able to know this?
Privacy legislation is clearly lacking. This type of action should bring the hammer down swiftly and soundly upon these gross and inappropriate corporate decision makers. Microsoft has needed that hammer blow for quite some time now. This should make that obvious. I guess I'll hold my breath while I see how Congress responds.
- mihaaly 1y agoI assume this would be a ... call it feature for now, so a feature not available in the EU due to GDPR violations.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- jaredsohn 1y ago> I know who the people in my photographs are. Why is Microsoft so eager to also be able to know this? Presumably it can be used for filtering as well - find me all pictures of me with my dad, etc.
- wkat4242 1y agoSure but if it was for your benefit, not theirs, they wouldn't force it on you.
- themafia 1y agoPrecisely. The logic could just as easily be "you can only turn this ON three times a year." You should be able to turn it off as many times as you want and no hidden counter should prevent you from doing so.
- 14 1y agoMy initial thoughts were so they could scan for csam while pretending as if users have a choice to not have their privacy violated.
- bayindirh 1y agoFrom my understanding, CSAM scanning is always considered a separate, always on and mandatory subsystem in any cloud storage system.
- odo1242 1y agoYes, any non E2EE cloud storage system has strict scanning for CSAM. And it's based on perceptual hashes, not AI (because AI systems can be tricked with normal-looking adversarial images pretty easily)
- heavyset_go 1y agoI built a similar photo ID system, not for this purpose or content, and the idea of platforms using perceptual hashes to potentially ruin people's lives is horrifying. Depending on the algorithm and parameters, you can easily get a scary amount of false positives, especially using algorithms that shrink images during hashing, which is a lot of them.
- dotnet00 1y agoI imagine you'd add more heuristics and various types of hashes? If the file is just sitting there, rarely accessed and unshared, or if the file only triggers on 2/10 hashes, it's probably a false alarm. If the file is on a public share, you can probably run an actual image comparison...
- heavyset_go 1y agoA lot of classic perceptual hash algorithms do "squinty" comparisons, where if an image kind of looks like one you've hashed against, you can get false positives. I'd imagine outside of egregious abuse and truly unique images, you could squint at a legal image and say it looks very much like another illegal image, and get a false positive. From what I'm reading about PhotoDNA, it's your standard phashing system from 15 years ago, which is terrifying. But yes, you can add heuristics, but you will still get false positives.
- zelphirkalt 1y agoActually, most users probably don't understand, that this ridiculous policy is more effort to implement. They just blindly follow whatever MS prescribes and have long given up on making any sense of the digital world.
- bippihippi1 1y agomost people probably won't know MS is doing this at all until their data is leaked
- antegamisou 1y agoI agree with you but there's nothing astonishing about any of this unfortunately, it was bound to happen. Almost all of cautionary statements about AI abuse fall on deaf ears of HN's overenthusiastic and ill-informed rabble, stultified by YC tech lobbyists.
- tomatotomato37 1y agoWorst part about it was all the people fretting on about ridiculous threats like the chatbot turning into skynet sucked the oxygen out of the room for the more realistic corporate threats
- exasperaited 1y agoRight. But then the AI firms did that deliberately, didn't they? Started the big philosophical argument to move the focus away from the things they were doing (epic misappropriation of intellectual property) and the very things their customers intended to do: fire huge numbers of staff on an international, multi-industry scale, replace them with AI, and replace already limited human accountability with simple disclaimers. The biggest worry would always be that the tools would be stultifying and shit but executives would use them to drive layoffs on an epic scale anyway. And hey now here we are: the tools are stultifying and shit, the projects have largely failed, and the only way to fix the losses is: layoffs.
- kmeisthax 1y ago[dead]
- abustamam 1y agoIt's fun that the working class bears the brunt of the mistakes of management. Manager: hey let's go all in on this fancy new toy! We'll all be billionaires! Employee: oh yeah I will work nights and weekends with no pay for this! I wanna be a billionaire! Manager: actually it failed, we ran out of money, you no longer have a job... But at least we didn't build skynet, right?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- ryandrake 1y agoIt's hilarious that they actually say that right on the settings screen. I wonder why they picked 3 instead of 2 or 4. Like, some product manager actually sat down and thought about just how ridiculous they could be and have it still be acceptable.
- landl0rd 1y agoMy guess is it was an arbitrary guess and the limit is due to creating a mass scan of photos. Depending on if they purge old data when turned off, it could mean toggling the switch tells microsoft's servers to re-scan every photo in your (possibly very large) library. Odd choice and poor optics (just limit the number of times you can enable and add a warning screen) but I wouldn't assume this was intentionally evil bad faith.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- QuantumNomad_ 1y agoI would be sceptical too, if I was still using Windows. I’ve seen reports in the past that people found that syncing to the cloud was turned back on automatically after installing Windows updates. I would not be surprised if Microsoft accidentally flip the setting back on for people who opted out of AI photo scanning. And so if you can only turn it back off three times a year, it only takes Microsoft messing up and opting you back in three times in a year against your will and then you are stuck opted in to AI scanning for the rest of the year. Like you said, they should be limiting the number of times it can be turned back on, not the number of times it can be turned off.
- nativeit 1y agoYep. I have clients who operate under HIPAA rules who called me out of the blue wondering where their documents had gone. Microsoft left a cheery note on the desktop saying they had very helpfully uploaded ALL of their protected patient health data into an unauthorized cloud storage account without prior warning following one a Windows 10 update.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- throwaway808081 1y agoFavebook introducing photo tagging was when I exited Facebook. This was pre-AI hype, perhaps 15 years ago. It seems Microsoft feel it is normalised. More you are their product. It strikes me as great insecurity.
- Auracle 1y agoHonestly, I hated when they removed automatic photo tagging. It was handy as hell when uploading hundreds of pictures from a family event, which is about all I use it for.
- CMay 1y agoCan someone explain to me why the immediate perception is that this is some kind of bad, negative, evil thing? I don't understand it. My assumption is that when this feature is on and you turn it off, they end up deleting the tags (since you've revoked permission for them to tag them). If it gets turned back on again, I assume that means they need to rescan them. So in effect, it sounded to me like a limit on how many times you can toggle this feature to prevent wasted processing. Their disclaimer already suggests they don't train on your photos.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 1y agoIf it was that simple, there would be no practical reason to limit that scrub to three ( and in such a confusion inducing ways ). If I want to waste my time scrubbing, that should be up to me -- assuming it is indeed just scrubbing tagged data, because if anything should have been learned by now, it is that: worst possible reading of any given feature must be assumed to the detriment of the user and benefit of the company Honestly, these days, I do not expect much of Microsoft. In fact, I recently thought to myself, there is no way they can still disappoint. But what do they do? They find a way damn it.
- niij 1y agoIt takes processing power to scan the photos.
- A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 1y agoDoes it take processing power to NOT scan photos?
- cortesoft 1y agoNo, but the scanning is happening on Microsoft servers, not locally, I am guessing. So if you enable the feature, it sends your photos to MS to scan... If you turn it off, they delete that data, meaning if you turn it on again, they have to process the photos again. Every time you enable it, you are using server resources. However, this should mean that they don't let you re-enable it after you turn it off 3 times, not that you can't turn it off if you have enabled it 3 times.
- beloch 1y agoTip: If you don't trust Microsoft but need to use Onedrive, there are encrypted volume tools (e.g. Cryptomator) specifically designed for use with Onedrive.
- ROBLOX_MOMENTS 1y agoIt's rather annoying that high-entropy files (also known as encrypted files... unknown magic header files) in OneDrive trigger ransomware protection.
- choeger 1y ago> Why is Microsoft so eager to also be able to know this? A database of pretty much all Western citizen's faces? That's a massive sales opportunity for all oppressive and wanna-be oppressive governments. Also, ads.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- animuchan 1y agoAt this point I think it's just called a government, sadly enough.
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 1y agoCombine face recognition on personal photos with age checks which include photos,and you can link stuff directly to Microsoft/Google accounts for ads
- reaperducer 1y ago"You can only turn off this setting 3 times a year." I look forward to getting a check from Microsoft for violating my privacy. I live in a state with better-than-average online privacy laws, and scanning my face without my permission is a violation. I expect the class action lawyers are salivating at Microsoft's hubris. I got $400 out of Facebook because it tagged me in the background of someone else's photo. Your turn, MS.
- burnt-resistor 1y agoDraconian Hobson's choice foisted upon users by technofeudal overlords. You are the product.
- account42 1y agoYou seem to be implying that users won't accept this. But users have accepted all the other bullshit Microsoft has pulled so far. It genuinely baffles me why anyone would choose to use their products yet many do and keep making excuses why alternatives are not viable.