{"id":8737,"date":"2021-11-02T19:58:26","date_gmt":"2021-11-02T19:58:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/TheNextWeb=1371921"},"modified":"2021-11-02T19:58:26","modified_gmt":"2021-11-02T19:58:26","slug":"theres-something-fishy-about-facebooks-pivot-on-facial-recognition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/?p=8737","title":{"rendered":"There\u2019s something fishy about Facebook\u2019s pivot on facial recognition"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
<\/div>\n

Meta today announced updates to its facial recognition program that will have sweeping consequences for the Facebook platform \u2014 and not in a good way.<\/span><\/p>\n

Meta? It\u2019s still Facebook to me and this move just proves that a dumpster fire by any other name would still smell as sickly.<\/span><\/p>\n

The company\u2019s not stopping the use of facial recognition. Nor is it deleting facial recognition data for more than a billion users.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s deleting some very specific facial recognition templates \u2014 those used to automatically tag people in photos on Facebook. There\u2019s nothing in the announcement today that would indicate it\u2019s actually deleting the company\u2019s image data or ceasing the use of facial recognition all-together.<\/span><\/p>\n

Facebook\u2019s a lot of things, but stupid isn\u2019t one of them. The powers that be at Meta (still catching up? Read this<\/a>) can surely see the writing on the wall. <\/span><\/p>\n

And there\u2019s three things that everyone needs to be aware of when parsing today\u2019s news:<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Facebook is old<\/a>, it\u2019s struggling to attract and maintain a youthful audience<\/span><\/li>\n
  2. The \u201cMetaverse\u201d is going to be so much worse than just a VR hangout<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n
  3. This is a meaningless gesture meant to demonstrate \u201cself-regulation<\/a>\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Old things first<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

    The name change, the paradigm change, the whole \u201cMetaverse\u201d thing\u2026 it\u2019s all part of a shift towards something more esoteric.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Facebook cut its teeth imagining the future. Where everyone else saw a way to rate college women on there appearances, Mark Zuckerberg saw a way to\u2026 rate everyone on their appearances.<\/span><\/p>\n

    And, along the way, he stumbled into creating the modern social network.<\/span><\/p>\n

    As the platform grew into prominence it essentially replaced late night phone conversations and SMS text messages as the youthful consumer\u2019s platform of choice on which to \u201chang out\u201d with friends and family when they couldn\u2019t be together.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Some of us grew up with three-way calling and AIM groups, others on Facebook and Instagram.<\/p>\n

    Zuckerberg and the rest of the Meta gang want to capture the zeitgeist of change again. And where they think everything is going, the company won\u2019t need facial recognition.<\/span><\/p>\n

    The Metaverse<\/strong><\/h2>\n

    A lot of pundits are struggling to describe the Metaverse idea. Right now, it feels like anything with cartoon avatars representing people in real time is being called a metaverse and that\u2019s pretty weird.<\/span><\/p>\n

    To put things into a different perspective, perhaps it\u2019s time we stopped looking at the metaverse as a place you go or even as a VR\/AR\/MR technology.<\/span><\/p>\n

    When the internet took off people also thought of it like a place. Where we used to \u201csurf the web\u201d as an activity, now we\u2019re watching Netflix, browsing Wikipedia, reading the news, or any number of activities. You can push a button on your phoneand get a pizza, a driver, or a sack of top-shelf cannabis (in some places) sent directly to your front door. <\/span><\/p>\n

    There is no more offline and online. <\/span>The internet isn\u2019t a place, it\u2019s a thing; a tool we use. And that\u2019s what the Metaverse is going to shape up to be as well.<\/span><\/p>\n

    The advent of cryptocurrency and NFTs has made the digital world, arguably, more lucrative than the \u201creal\u201d one. Where savvy investing under traditional paradigms can be difficult for those without seven-digit war chests, the emerging world of digital commodities promises a gold rush the likes of which we haven\u2019t seen since the dotcom bubble was fully-inflated.<\/span><\/p>\n

    We\u2019ll just leave that comparison hanging out there.<\/p>\n

    Self regulation<\/span><\/h2>\n

    And that brings us to the cherry on the top of this crap sundae. The language Meta uses throughout its press release makes it clear that this is a marketing scheme.<\/span><\/p>\n

    There\u2019s no upside to spending company time and resources developing yesterday\u2019s technologies. Facial recognition is mostly useful as an on-device technology and Facebook doesn\u2019t sell phones. In fact, quite the opposite, it\u2019s heavily-investing in headsets and glasses that it hopes you\u2019ll cover your face up with.<\/span><\/p>\n

    The Metaverse isn\u2019t about storing or sharing your family\u2019s photographs. It\u2019s about digital ownership.<\/span><\/p>\n

    However, there\u2019s some value in convincing people you\u2019ve done something for the greater good. And Meta\u2019s trying to frame this as part of its rebrand. <\/span><\/p>\n

    In its press release<\/a> on updating its facial recognition policies, it mentions a lack of government regulation several times. Yet never once does it explain why the government would need to regulate this particular use of facial recognition. <\/span><\/p>\n

    Per Meta:<\/p>\n

    \n

    We need to weigh the positive use cases for facial recognition against growing societal concerns, especially as regulators have yet to provide clear rules.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    The reality is that this tech doesn\u2019t appear to have been unethical or harmful. It was an opt-in technology. Chances are, even the upcoming European regulations<\/a> on facial recognition tech and AI would have allowed for its continued use. <\/span><\/p>\n

    Meta\u2019s actually pulling a facial recognition system out of production here that users really liked. It alerted people when they\u2019d been tagged in a photo, which was pretty useful. And it also provided audio cues as to who was in a photo for the visually impaired.<\/p>\n

    So, to sum up, the company\u2019s cancelling a useful AI system that appears to be one of the few ethical uses of facial recognition and framing it as self regulation. Meanwhile, it\u2019s actually going to make it easier for people to share unwanted images of you on Facebook (since you will no longer be notified) and it\u2019ll make things harder on the visually impaired.<\/p>\n

    Yep. I\u2019d recognize the smell of this dumpster fire anywhere, by any name.<\/p>\n

    Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Meta today announced updates to its facial recognition program that will have sweeping consequences for the Facebook platform \u2014 and not in a good way. Meta? It\u2019s still Facebook to me and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8738,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8737"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8737\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}