Shut down Social Media (except D1P, naturally), update: Facebook to shut down its facial recognition program

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Facebook plans to shut down its facial recognition program

WWW.CNBC.COM

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Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, on Tuesday announced that it will be putting an end to its face recognition system.

 

Quote

 

Facebook on Tuesday announced that it will be putting an end to its face recognition system amid growing concern from users and regulators.

 

The social network, whose parent company is now known as Meta, said it will delete more than 1 billion people’s individual facial recognition templates as a result of this change. The company said more than a third of Facebook’s daily active users, or more than 600 million accounts, had opted into the use of the face recognition technology.

 

With the end of this system, Facebook will no longer automatically recognize people’s faces in photos or videos. The change, however, will also impact the automatic alt text technology that the company uses to describe images for people who are blind or visually impaired. Facebook services that rely on the face recognition systems will be removed over the coming weeks, Meta said.

 

 

[Kal-El814]

[Jason]

17 minutes ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

Facebook plans to shut down its facial recognition program

WWW.CNBC.COM

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Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, on Tuesday announced that it will be putting an end to its face recognition system.

 

 

 

8 minutes ago, Kal-El814 said:

 

Facebook's facial recognition progam will shut down.

 

Meta's facial recognition program will launch on Monday.

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

It's bad for ADA accessibility looks like

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

 

 

 

[cusideabelincoln]

On 10/28/2021 at 5:02 PM, Kal-El814 said:

How do so many of these chucklefucks seem to forget that in the technological future fiction they love referencing, the corpos are the villains?

 

It’s like bragging about forging a magic ring in a volcano, how you really put your heart and soul into it, and that nobody will want to take it off.

 

The corpos can get away with it because in this story we are the Orcs: unruly followers obsessed with in fighting.

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

I'm using the facebook desktop app because my phone won't work and I still need to talk to people, and holy shit it fucking sucks. laggy as hell and unreliable. worthless site

[Kal-El814]

Presented with no comment, because none is needed.

 

 

[Keyser_Soze]

On 11/23/2021 at 4:26 PM, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

I'm using the facebook desktop app because my phone won't work and I still need to talk to people, and holy shit it fucking sucks. laggy as hell and unreliable. worthless site

 

Any reason you'd use a desktop app and not the website in a browser on a desktop?

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

4 minutes ago, Keyser_Soze said:

 

Any reason you'd use a desktop app and not the website in a browser on a desktop?

that's what i mean by desktop app, the website on a desktop computer. unusable.

[Keyser_Soze]

7 minutes ago, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

that's what i mean by desktop app, the website on a desktop computer. unusable.

 

Maybe your computer is just potato compared to your phone.

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

2 minutes ago, Keyser_Soze said:

 

Maybe your computer is just potato compared to your phone.

it is, but facebook is the only one that is shit!

[Jason]

Craig Kelly: MP banned from Facebook appointed to parliament’s social media inquiry | Australian politics | The Guardian

WWW.THEGUARDIAN.COM

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Choice of the MP, who has been criticised for posting ‘misleading’ vaccine information online, raises other committee members’ eyebrows

 

[CitizenVectron]

Fascists Are Already Weaponizing Twitter's New 'Private Media' Rule

GIZMODO.COM

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A new Twitter rule against sharing "personal media" without consent is predictably being gamed by the far right.

 

Wow what a surprise

[SuperSpreader]

On 5/4/2021 at 11:09 AM, SuperSpreader said:

It 100% has to be. I deleted it a while back. My wife and I went to a concert and after were talking about how rude the crowd was, all of a sudden a bunch of suggested articles on rude crowds. I was like wtf I have never had that conversation ever before. BOTH our phones too. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

YEAH I FUCKING KNEW IT - YOU SON OF A BITCH

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Leak, Facebook Partner Brags About Listening to Your Phone’s Microphone to Serve Ads for Stuff You Mention

SG.NEWS.YAHOO.COM

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Actively Creepy In a pitch deck to prospective customers, One of Facebook's alleged marketing partners explained how it listens to users' smartphone microphones and advertises to them accordingly. As 404 Media reports based on documents leaked to its reporters, the TV and radio news giant Cox Media Group (CMG) claims that its so-called "Active Listening" software […]

 

 

 

(i wish stepee was here to celebrate with me)

[Ghost_MH]

27 minutes ago, SuperSpreader said:

 

 

 

 

 

 

YEAH I FUCKING KNEW IT - YOU SON OF A BITCH

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Leak, Facebook Partner Brags About Listening to Your Phone’s Microphone to Serve Ads for Stuff You Mention

SG.NEWS.YAHOO.COM

---

Actively Creepy In a pitch deck to prospective customers, One of Facebook's alleged marketing partners explained how it listens to users' smartphone microphones and advertises to them accordingly. As 404 Media reports based on documents leaked to its reporters, the TV and radio news giant Cox Media Group (CMG) claims that its so-called "Active Listening" software […]

 

 

 

(i wish stepee was here to celebrate with me)

 

I'm more shocked someone admitted to this rather than it being something that happens.

[legend]

1 hour ago, SuperSpreader said:

 

 

 

 

 

 

YEAH I FUCKING KNEW IT - YOU SON OF A BITCH

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Leak, Facebook Partner Brags About Listening to Your Phone’s Microphone to Serve Ads for Stuff You Mention

SG.NEWS.YAHOO.COM

---

Actively Creepy In a pitch deck to prospective customers, One of Facebook's alleged marketing partners explained how it listens to users' smartphone microphones and advertises to them accordingly. As 404 Media reports based on documents leaked to its reporters, the TV and radio news giant Cox Media Group (CMG) claims that its so-called "Active Listening" software […]

 

 

 

(i wish stepee was here to celebrate with me)

 

I'm skeptical that the Facebook app is doing this, and I'm skeptical that this is happening all the time passively for whatever does it. If the facebook app was doing this, there would be red flags over the device usage and it's probably not even possible to do it on iOS devices given how much Apple regulates apps. Even if they were breaking rules and were hiding it, Apple would probably fine out with how careful they are with Facebook, let alone third parties watching their battery life die when the Facebook app was on in the background.

 

I mean, Facebook will steal and invade your privacy quite happily, but the logistics of this method specifically gives me a doubt, and this report isn't especially iron clad and clear about the claimed usage pattern (ad partner says it has and uses this voice recognition tech isn't very clear).

 

But if it turns out Facebook is doing this, then they should get sued to oblivion.

[SuperSpreader]

56 minutes ago, legend said:

probably not even possible

 

You're not even possible

[chakoo]

1 hour ago, legend said:

 

I'm skeptical that the Facebook app is doing this, and I'm skeptical that this is happening all the time passively for whatever does it. If the facebook app was doing this, there would be red flags over the device usage and it's probably not even possible to do it on iOS devices given how much Apple regulates apps. Even if they were breaking rules and were hiding it, Apple would probably fine out with how careful they are with Facebook, let alone third parties watching their battery life die when the Facebook app was on in the background.

 

I mean, Facebook will steal and invade your privacy quite happily, but the logistics of this method specifically gives me a doubt, and this report isn't especially iron clad and clear about the claimed usage pattern (ad partner says it has and uses this voice recognition tech isn't very clear).

 

But if it turns out Facebook is doing this, then they should get sued to oblivion.

 

Yup. I 100% agree on this. Hell I feel if this was happening on Android someone would have found out from reverse engineering the apk already.

[Kal-El814]

Our phones know so much about us, who we're around, and where we're around them that listening to the mic seems not only unnecessary but needlessly complicated to filter out the signal from the literal noise.

[Ghost_MH]

1 hour ago, Kal-El814 said:

Our phones know so much about us, who we're around, and where we're around them that listening to the mic seems not only unnecessary but needlessly complicated to filter out the signal from the literal noise.

 

I'd agree if not for Samsung getting caught using their TVs' voice recognition to listen in and serve ads based on keywords they overheard...and this was like a decade ago.

 

I think there's some nuance being skipped over. I don't think they're listening all the time. I'm sure the app needs to be open already, so I don't believe you can get away with this stuff as a background task. However, we are talking about a combination of Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram. All of which have permission to access your phone, your mic, your location, your phone state, to push notifications, to run tasks in the background, to access your storage, and everything else your phone can offer. These apps are open and in focus very often and I don't believe there's any data Meta could collect that it would actively choose not to.

[Jason]

1 hour ago, Ghost_MH said:

These apps are open and in focus very often and I don't believe there's any data Meta could collect that it would actively choose not to.

 

I'm not sure when this was added to Android and iOS but now you apps can't access the camera or microphone without a very obvious visual indicator appearing. So it's more plausible this was happening before that mandatory indicator was implemented, but it seems far less plausible it's happening now.

 

I'm also not sure how hard it would be to circumvent the mandatory indicator on Android, but given the paranoia around Facebook allegedly doing this you'd think someone would have caught it by now if it was happening on the Android app. And I assume Apple has this extremely well locked down.

 

And in either case, this seems like it would be a major zero day exploit, right? Even if Facebook knows how to do this you'd think there's a national security letter from the feds ordering them not to so that this can be used in some valuable government intelligence gathering operation instead of being wasted (via risk of discovery) by Facebook on eking a few extra cents out of each ad impression.

 

The Samsung TVs aren't a good comparison because IIRC those didn't have any kind of obvious indicator that they were listening the way modern smartphones do.

 

I guess what seems more plausible is that Facebook is snooping on the microphone if you do something else that activates the microphone. But it just doesn't seem plausible that they're covertly toggling the microphone on without anyone knowing given the modern smartphone protections against this.

[Jason]

Actually where I could see this maybe happening is Windows. Apple has a pretty obvious indicator like the one on iOS for camera/mic access. Not sure what Windows 10 and back did for this and the Windows 11 one is a lot more subtle than what smartphones and macOS do, and is especially easy to miss if you auto-hide the taskbar.

[Ghost_MH]

6 minutes ago, Jason said:

 

I'm not sure when this was added to Android and iOS but now you apps can't access the camera or microphone without a very obvious visual indicator appearing. So it's more plausible this was happening before that mandatory indicator was implemented, but it seems far less plausible it's happening now.

 

I'm also not sure how hard it would be to circumvent the mandatory indicator on Android, but given the paranoia around Facebook allegedly doing this you'd think someone would have caught it by now if it was happening on the Android app. And I assume Apple has this extremely well locked down.

 

And in either case, this seems like it would be a major zero day exploit, right? Even if Facebook knows how to do this you'd think there's a national security letter from the feds ordering them not to so that this can be used in some valuable government intelligence gathering operation instead of being wasted (via risk of discovery) by Facebook on eking a few extra cents out of each ad impression.

 

The Samsung TVs aren't a good comparison because IIRC those didn't have any kind of obvious indicator that they were listening the way modern smartphones do.

 

I guess what seems more plausible is that Facebook is snooping on the microphone if you do something else that activates the microphone. But it just doesn't seem plausible that they're covertly toggling the microphone on without anyone knowing given the modern smartphone protections against this.

 

I would believe it if apps didn't do this anymore thanks to new app regulations by Google and Apple. I just refuse to believe there wasn't a time when they did. That's giving the likes of Meta far more trust than they deserve.

[cusideabelincoln]

6 hours ago, SuperSpreader said:

 

 

 

 

 

 

YEAH I FUCKING KNEW IT - YOU SON OF A BITCH

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Leak, Facebook Partner Brags About Listening to Your Phone’s Microphone to Serve Ads for Stuff You Mention

SG.NEWS.YAHOO.COM

---

Actively Creepy In a pitch deck to prospective customers, One of Facebook's alleged marketing partners explained how it listens to users' smartphone microphones and advertises to them accordingly. As 404 Media reports based on documents leaked to its reporters, the TV and radio news giant Cox Media Group (CMG) claims that its so-called "Active Listening" software […]

 

 

 

(i wish stepee was here to celebrate with me)

 

I wouldn't be surprised if this actually turns out to be true. At the very least they are tracking your data from other apps, platforms, search history, and cookies, but sometimes I get an ad for something I talked about 10 minutes ago and didn't recently lookup anywhere else.

[chakoo]

9 hours ago, Ghost_MH said:

 

I would believe it if apps didn't do this anymore thanks to new app regulations by Google and Apple. I just refuse to believe there wasn't a time when they did. That's giving the likes of Meta far more trust than they deserve.

 

They don't need to, they have enough data on you from other sources (Meta is used as an analytics/ad platform by many companies). Not to mention that if they were it would have been known by some employees snooping on user's data which they've done in the past. The voice data they do have on users is from recorded messages in Messenger.

[chakoo]

I've slightly mentioned it before but it's worth pointing out again. Security researchers and hackers are crawling the decompiled code of these apps looking for flaws and exploits, not just simply looking at the manifest and calling it a day. If they were doing it it would have been found out already.

[Kal-El814]

11 hours ago, Ghost_MH said:

I'd agree if not for Samsung getting caught using their TVs' voice recognition to listen in and serve ads based on keywords they overheard...and this was like a decade ago.

 

I think there's some nuance being skipped over. I don't think they're listening all the time. I'm sure the app needs to be open already, so I don't believe you can get away with this stuff as a background task. However, we are talking about a combination of Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram. All of which have permission to access your phone, your mic, your location, your phone state, to push notifications, to run tasks in the background, to access your storage, and everything else your phone can offer. These apps are open and in focus very often and I don't believe there's any data Meta could collect that it would actively choose not to.

 

I just don’t know.

 

Even without access to the mic, even casual users of social media apps usually end up sharing more information than they realize or they’re friends with people who do.

 

Also I think there’s the broader issue of who’s reporting this; people are likely to notice something like, “I said Pop Tarts for the first time since grade school and then I got a Pop Tart ad in my feed” vs. everyone this DOESN’T happen for.

 

Anecdotally, I’ve enabled the mic on my account temporarily a few times, had the app open, and talked about stuff and I never saw anything related to what I’ve spoken about. It took Facebook about a decade to realize that I like beagles, it still has never presented anything cat related to me despite being a cat owner for longer than I’ve had an account. That doesn’t mean anything of course but for some people these ads seem borderline prescient, for other people it seems like it never happens.

 

1 hour ago, chakoo said:

I've slightly mentioned it before but it's worth pointing out again. Security researchers and hackers are crawling the decompiled code of these apps looking for flaws and exploits, not just simply looking at the manifest and calling it a day. If they were doing it it would have been found out already.

 

Also… this. It’s not impossible that something nefarious could be happening of course; I never give social media companies the benefit of the doubt.

[SuperSpreader]

28 minutes ago, Kal-El814 said:

 

I just don’t know.

 

Even without access to the mic, even casual users of social media apps usually end up sharing more information than they realize or they’re friends with people who do.

 

Also I think there’s the broader issue of who’s reporting this; people are likely to notice something like, “I said Pop Tarts for the first time since grade school and then I got a Pop Tart ad in my feed” vs. everyone this DOESN’T happen for.

 

Anecdotally, I’ve enabled the mic on my account temporarily a few times, had the app open, and talked about stuff and I never saw anything related to what I’ve spoken about. It took Facebook about a decade to realize that I like beagles, it still has never presented anything cat related to me despite being a cat owner for longer than I’ve had an account. That doesn’t mean anything of course but for some people these ads seem borderline prescient, for other people it seems like it never happens.

 

 

Also… this. It’s not impossible that something nefarious could be happening of course; I never give social media companies the benefit of the doubt.

 

 

All I know is that WITHOUT SEARCHING - Facebook would start to suggest things I would talk to someone about, this is years ago. Things that I haven't looked up online. Unique comments in conversations that were one offs.

 

Since I uninstalled it in like 2019 - it has NEVER HAPPENED since.

[chakoo]

3 minutes ago, SuperSpreader said:

 

 

All I know is that WITHOUT SEARCHING - Facebook would start to suggest things I would talk to someone about, this is years ago. Things that I haven't looked up online. Unique comments in conversations that were one offs.

 

Since I uninstalled it in like 2019 - it has NEVER HAPPENED since.

 

You failed to consider the person you were talking to searched for it or saw an ad about it that triggered you two talking about it which then made its way to you.

 

There is also the issue of bias that you don't recognize something you've been seeing until it's been brought to your attention. I've seen this a lot in the past even with offline media. 

 

[SuperSpreader]

Why would it connect me to people I'm not even friends with on Facebook? Every time I spoke to people they'd go do research about what we discussed? lol

I SAW WHAT I SAW MAN.

 

[CitizenVectron]

1 hour ago, SuperSpreader said:

Why would it connect me to people I'm not even friends with on Facebook? Every time I spoke to people they'd go do research about what we discussed? lol

I SAW WHAT I SAW MAN.

 

 

 

 

Generally how it works is:

1. You talk to someone about something
2. Facebook (or Google, etc) knows that you were in the same location at the same time (or has access to your call history depending on permissions, etc)
3. They know the other person searched for something
4. They believe there is a greater chance you want the same info

 

[Chris-]

I work in the industry and can say I've never heard of or seen any 'active listening' functionality, whether on Meta or the various demand-side platforms (which doesn't necessarily disprove their existence - these things tend to be black boxes - but I've never met a media company that doesn't love talking up their targeting capabilities). I also don't think it would be particularly useful, because targeting based on psychographic attributes should already be serving ads to the 'right' people, so all you would get out of it is a nominal sense of intent (which is nice but can be gained in a variety of cheaper ways).

[SuperSpreader]

29 minutes ago, CitizenVectron said:

 

 

 

Generally how it works is:

1. You talk to someone about something
2. Facebook (or Google, etc) knows that you were in the same location at the same time (or has access to your call history depending on permissions, etc)
3. They know the other person searched for something
4. They believe there is a greater chance you want the same info

 

No

[Keyser_Soze]

@SuperSpreader I'm with you, and it's not just limited to face book. These ads stand out because it was something mentioned in an offhand conversation that I would never be interested in otherwise, that's how you can tell it's blatant.