7 ms·

I don't really see the issue. If you don't want the face recognition feature, then you'll turn it off once, and that's that. Maybe if you're unsure, you might t

I don't really see the issue. If you don't want the face recognition feature, then you'll turn it off once, and that's that. Maybe if you're unsure, you might turn it off, and then back on, and then back off again. But what's the use case where you'd want to do this more than 3x per year? Presumably, it's somewhat expensive to run face recognition on all of your photos. When you turn it off, they have to throw away the index (they'd better be doing this for privacy reasons), and then rebuild it from scratch when you turn the feature on again.

gus_massa 1y ago
How hard it to turn it on? Does it show a confirmation message? My wife has a phone with a button on the side that opens the microphone to ask questions to Google. I guess 90% of the audios they get are "How the /&%/&#"% do I close this )(&(/&(%)?????!?!??"
- xdfgh1112 1y ago
  I bought a new Motorola phone and there are no less than three ways to open Google assistant (side button, hold home button, swipe from corner). Took me about 10 seconds before I triggered it unintentionally and quickly figured out how to disable all of them...
ArnoVW 1y ago
To prevent you from having the option to temporarily disable it, so you have to choose between privacy and the supposed utility
- Barbing 1y ago
  Right, while I understand the potential compute cost, it would be like the iPhone restricting the number of times you could use “allow once“ for location permissions.
JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> When you turn it off, they have to throw away the index (they'd better be doing this for privacy reasons), and then rebuild it from scratch when you turn the feature on again This is probably the case. But Redmond being Redmond, they put their foot in their mouth by saying "you can only turn off this setting 3 times a year" (emphasis mine).
NoLinkToMe 1y ago
Agreed, in practice for me there's no real issue. But that's not necessarily true for everyone. And it doesn't need to be this way, either. For starters I think it'd help if we understood why they do this. I'm sure there's a cost to the compute MS spends on AI'ing all your photos, turning it off under privacy rules means you need to throw away that compute. And turning it back on creates an additional cost for MS, that they've already spent for nothing. Limiting that makes sense. What doesn't make sense is that I'd expect virtually nobody to turn it on and off over and over again, beyond 3 times, to the point that cost increases by more than a rounding error... like what type of user would do that, and why would that type of user not be exceedingly rare? And even in that case, it'd make more sense to do it the other way around: you can turn on the feature 3 times per year, and off anytime. i.e. if you abuse it, you lose out on the feature, not your privacy. So I think it is an issue that could and should be quickly solved.
a2128 1y ago
If this is the true reason, then they have made some poor decisions throughout that still deserve criticism. Firstly by restricting the number of times you can turn it _off_ rather than _on_, secondly by not explaining the reason in the linked pages, and thirdly by having their publicist completely refuse to say a word on the matter. In fact, if you follow the linked page, you'll find a screenshot showing it was originally worded differently, "You can only change this setting 3 times a year" dating all the way back to 2023. So at some point someone made a conscious decision to change the wording to restrict the number of times you can turn it _off_
- CMay 1y ago
  Maybe what they see is that most people who turn it off will leave it off, but some people turn it off and turn it back on as a part of a pattern/habit around temporarily putting files on OneDrive they don't want to scan. For example, people who don't use their encrypted vault on OneDrive, so they upload photos that should otherwise be encrypted to their normal OneDrive which gets scanned and tagged. It could be a photo of their driver's license, social security card, or something illicit. So these users toggle the tagging feature on and off during this time. Maybe the idea is to push these people's use case to the vault where it probably belongs?
noir_lord 1y ago
> If you don't want the face recognition feature, then you'll turn it off once. The issue is that is a feature that 100% should in any sane world be opt in - not opt out. Microsoft privacy settings are a case of - “It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard.”
- bapak 1y ago
  There's inherently nothing wrong with face recognition, I love being able to search my own photos on my iPhone. If you could keep it private, you totally would too.
yuvalr1 1y ago
Well, sometimes Microsoft decides to change your settings back. This has happened to me very frequently after installing Windows updates. I remember finding myself turning the same settings off time and again.
- netsharc 1y ago
  The "fuck you, user!" behavior of software companies now means there's no more "No", only "Maybe later". Every time I update Google Photos, it shows me the screen that "Photos backups are not turned on! Turn on now?" (because they want to upsell their paid storage space option).
  - jtmarl1n 1y ago
    The lack of a true “no” option and only “maybe later” infuriates me.
    - ryandrake 1y ago
      Silicon Valley companies are like a creepy guy in the nightclub going up to each woman and asking "Want to dance? [Yes] or [Ask Me Again]". The desperation is pathetic.
  - duped 1y ago
    I mean at this point I think it's really just utter incompetence over at Microsoft to design a system that can be updated without breaking it. They have never actually cared about solving that problem. If they had taste, someone opinionated over there would knock heads before shipping another version of windows that requires restarts or mutates user settings.
    - netsharc 1y ago
      A joke in the Windows 95 days was "You plugged in a mouse. Please restart your computer.". A few weeks ago I plugged in a Logitech wireless mouse receiver, Windows 10 installed the drivers automatically, and finished with "To complete the installation of the software, please restart your computer"...
kypro 1y ago
Assuming this reasoning is accurate, why not just silently throw a rate limit error and simply not reenable it if it's repeatedly switched on and off?
netsharc 1y ago
I wonder if it's possible to encrypt the index with a key that's copied to the user's device, and if the user wants to turn off this setting, delete the key on the server. When they want to turn it back on, the device uploads the key. Yes, the key might end up gone if there's a reinstall, etc. If the user leaves it off for a year, then delete the encrypted index from the server...
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
bayindirh 1y ago
Even KDE's Digikam can run "somewhat expensive" algorithms on your photos without melting your PC and making you wait a year to recognize and label faces. Even my 10(?) year old iPhone X can do facial recognition and memory extraction on device while charging. My Sony A7-III can detect faces in real time, and discriminate it from 5 registered faces to do focus prioritization the moment I half-press the shutter. That thing will take mere minutes on Azure when batched and fed through GPUs. If my hunch is right, the option will have a "disable AI use for x months" slider and will turn itself on without letting you know. So you can't opt out of it completely, ever.
like_any_other 1y ago
So why not limit how many times you can turn it on, instead of off? We all know why.
wzdd 1y ago
"When this feature is disabled, facial recognition will be disabled immediately and existing recognition data will be purged within 60 days". Then you don't need a creepy message. Okay, so that's 6 times a year, but whatever.
bionhoward 1y ago
The point is it’s sucking your data into some amorphous big brother dataset without explicitly asking you if you want that to happen first. Opt out AI features are generally rude, trashy, low-class, money grubbing data grabs
pjc50 1y ago
> what's the use case where you'd want to do this more than 3x per year? That means that all Microsoft has to do to get your consent to scan photos is turn the setting on every quarter.
anigbrowl 1y ago
Presumably, it's somewhat expensive to run face recognition on all of your photos. Very likely true, but we shouldn't have to presume. If that's their motivation, they should state it clearly up front and make it opt-out by default. They can put a (?) callout on the UI for design decisions that have external constraints.

gus_massa 1y ago

How hard it to turn it on? Does it show a confirmation message? My wife has a phone with a button on the side that opens the microphone to ask questions to Google. I guess 90% of the audios they get are "How the /&%/&#"% do I close this )(&(/&(%)?????!?!??"

xdfgh1112 1y ago
I bought a new Motorola phone and there are no less than three ways to open Google assistant (side button, hold home button, swipe from corner). Took me about 10 seconds before I triggered it unintentionally and quickly figured out how to disable all of them...

ArnoVW 1y ago

To prevent you from having the option to temporarily disable it, so you have to choose between privacy and the supposed utility

Barbing 1y ago
Right, while I understand the potential compute cost, it would be like the iPhone restricting the number of times you could use “allow once“ for location permissions.

JumpCrisscross 1y ago

> When you turn it off, they have to throw away the index (they'd better be doing this for privacy reasons), and then rebuild it from scratch when you turn the feature on again This is probably the case. But Redmond being Redmond, they put their foot in their mouth by saying "you can only turn off this setting 3 times a year" (emphasis mine).

NoLinkToMe 1y ago

Agreed, in practice for me there's no real issue. But that's not necessarily true for everyone. And it doesn't need to be this way, either. For starters I think it'd help if we understood why they do this. I'm sure there's a cost to the compute MS spends on AI'ing all your photos, turning it off under privacy rules means you need to throw away that compute. And turning it back on creates an additional cost for MS, that they've already spent for nothing. Limiting that makes sense. What doesn't make sense is that I'd expect virtually nobody to turn it on and off over and over again, beyond 3 times, to the point that cost increases by more than a rounding error... like what type of user would do that, and why would that type of user not be exceedingly rare? And even in that case, it'd make more sense to do it the other way around: you can turn on the feature 3 times per year, and off anytime. i.e. if you abuse it, you lose out on the feature, not your privacy. So I think it is an issue that could and should be quickly solved.

a2128 1y ago

If this is the true reason, then they have made some poor decisions throughout that still deserve criticism. Firstly by restricting the number of times you can turn it _off_ rather than _on_, secondly by not explaining the reason in the linked pages, and thirdly by having their publicist completely refuse to say a word on the matter. In fact, if you follow the linked page, you'll find a screenshot showing it was originally worded differently, "You can only change this setting 3 times a year" dating all the way back to 2023. So at some point someone made a conscious decision to change the wording to restrict the number of times you can turn it _off_

CMay 1y ago
Maybe what they see is that most people who turn it off will leave it off, but some people turn it off and turn it back on as a part of a pattern/habit around temporarily putting files on OneDrive they don't want to scan. For example, people who don't use their encrypted vault on OneDrive, so they upload photos that should otherwise be encrypted to their normal OneDrive which gets scanned and tagged. It could be a photo of their driver's license, social security card, or something illicit. So these users toggle the tagging feature on and off during this time. Maybe the idea is to push these people's use case to the vault where it probably belongs?

noir_lord 1y ago

> If you don't want the face recognition feature, then you'll turn it off once. The issue is that is a feature that 100% should in any sane world be opt in - not opt out. Microsoft privacy settings are a case of - “It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard.”

bapak 1y ago
There's inherently nothing wrong with face recognition, I love being able to search my own photos on my iPhone. If you could keep it private, you totally would too.

yuvalr1 1y ago

Well, sometimes Microsoft decides to change your settings back. This has happened to me very frequently after installing Windows updates. I remember finding myself turning the same settings off time and again.

netsharc 1y ago
The "fuck you, user!" behavior of software companies now means there's no more "No", only "Maybe later". Every time I update Google Photos, it shows me the screen that "Photos backups are not turned on! Turn on now?" (because they want to upsell their paid storage space option).
- jtmarl1n 1y ago
  The lack of a true “no” option and only “maybe later” infuriates me.
  - ryandrake 1y ago
    Silicon Valley companies are like a creepy guy in the nightclub going up to each woman and asking "Want to dance? [Yes] or [Ask Me Again]". The desperation is pathetic.
- duped 1y ago
  I mean at this point I think it's really just utter incompetence over at Microsoft to design a system that can be updated without breaking it. They have never actually cared about solving that problem. If they had taste, someone opinionated over there would knock heads before shipping another version of windows that requires restarts or mutates user settings.
  - netsharc 1y ago
    A joke in the Windows 95 days was "You plugged in a mouse. Please restart your computer.". A few weeks ago I plugged in a Logitech wireless mouse receiver, Windows 10 installed the drivers automatically, and finished with "To complete the installation of the software, please restart your computer"...

kypro 1y ago

Assuming this reasoning is accurate, why not just silently throw a rate limit error and simply not reenable it if it's repeatedly switched on and off?

netsharc 1y ago

I wonder if it's possible to encrypt the index with a key that's copied to the user's device, and if the user wants to turn off this setting, delete the key on the server. When they want to turn it back on, the device uploads the key. Yes, the key might end up gone if there's a reinstall, etc. If the user leaves it off for a year, then delete the encrypted index from the server...

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

bayindirh 1y ago

Even KDE's Digikam can run "somewhat expensive" algorithms on your photos without melting your PC and making you wait a year to recognize and label faces. Even my 10(?) year old iPhone X can do facial recognition and memory extraction on device while charging. My Sony A7-III can detect faces in real time, and discriminate it from 5 registered faces to do focus prioritization the moment I half-press the shutter. That thing will take mere minutes on Azure when batched and fed through GPUs. If my hunch is right, the option will have a "disable AI use for x months" slider and will turn itself on without letting you know. So you can't opt out of it completely, ever.

like_any_other 1y ago

So why not limit how many times you can turn it on, instead of off? We all know why.

wzdd 1y ago

"When this feature is disabled, facial recognition will be disabled immediately and existing recognition data will be purged within 60 days". Then you don't need a creepy message. Okay, so that's 6 times a year, but whatever.

bionhoward 1y ago

The point is it’s sucking your data into some amorphous big brother dataset without explicitly asking you if you want that to happen first. Opt out AI features are generally rude, trashy, low-class, money grubbing data grabs

pjc50 1y ago

> what's the use case where you'd want to do this more than 3x per year? That means that all Microsoft has to do to get your consent to scan photos is turn the setting on every quarter.

anigbrowl 1y ago

Presumably, it's somewhat expensive to run face recognition on all of your photos. Very likely true, but we shouldn't have to presume. If that's their motivation, they should state it clearly up front and make it opt-out by default. They can put a (?) callout on the UI for design decisions that have external constraints.