THE COOLEST (OR CREEPIEST) THING ON FACEBOOK by Scott Budman
Facebook likes to talk about privacy, but, let’s be honest: If you’ve spent any time on the social networking behemoth, you know the site is all about revealing yourself.
A new app, however, may take Facebook’s hey-look-at-me culture one step too far.
It’s called “Photo Tagger,” from a company called Face.com. It uses impressive photo recognition technology to take your uploaded photos, go out to the Web, and identify them through “tags.” Tags being those little ID’ing names that you can see when you scroll your cursor over a Facebook photo.
That in itself doesn’t sound all that bad, but when we tried this in the newsroom, it scared the crap out of just about everybody with a Facebook account. Here’s why: While it’s a convenient way to tag photos you may have just uploaded as an album onto your Facebook page, it can quickly and accurately identify someone who may not know they’re in your album, or who may not be a friend of yours.
The only mistakes we saw were when someone was ID’ed, but it was actually their twin brother or sister. That in itself unsettled a few of our test subjects.
Face.com’s CEO Gil Hirsch, talking to us from Tel Aviv, Israel, where the company is based, explained that his company’s technology helps to solve the problem of identifying people whose faces are not facing the camera (or are out of focus) when you take a picture, and are therefore harder to tag.
He says the point of “Photo Tagger” is not to stalk people, but rather to better identify people who are OK with you putting pictures of them onto your Facebook photo albums. In fact, he says, his app is specifically built to only find people who already want to be your friend. But what about people who don’t quite get that once they’re on any social networking site, they’re pretty much kissing their privacy goodbye? Most people I know think nothing of putting their (identified) family members up on Facebook, and letting in just about anybody who wants to be their “friend.”
You have to actively add someone as a “friend” and it is not forced upon you. This app explicitly asks you to add the app, it is not forced upon you. Facebook is an inclusive system and if you do not know the terms of your agreement, that is your fault. No one is doing this against your will. Besides, you should not “friend” someone you do not trust and should expect tagging of yourself if you are on the site.
This is all much ado about nothing.
On anything where there is a participation choice, no matter what it is, oe should have to opt “in”, not “out”. No company should have the right to automatcally sign someone up for a program, app, list…anything.
If a company wants to introduce a new program, fine. But don’t automatically sign someone up then say they can opt “out”. Explain throughly what it is, then give the choice to opt “in” if they want to participate. However, because most businesses choose not to do this, instead preferring the gotcha method and sending people on a trasure hunt to find the opt “out”, we are finding our privacy is going out the window.
Good article.. It’s been obvious for a very, very long time that these types of programs rely most on, make their living off of, are unapologetically predatory upon..
Unendoctrined Newbies.
Do you trust your friends/family with photos of you and your children to do the right thing and at the very least ask your permission before uploading them to an online website of any kind?
THAT is the bigger issue of concern here.
Many images/contents from personal web-pages are also harvested and tagged by the name you give them by search engines and come up in said search engine’s image searches.
Be informed.
Chad & Kimm .. you both bring up good points, and yes, this is an “opt-in” app, like most things on sites like FB .
That said, it seems that most people are not taking the time to get to know the security policies of websites & apps before they jump in with photos of themselves & their kids. People get burned on this stuff all the time, and, yes, our privacy is going out the window. If you’re worried, you have to be more vigilant than ever.
-scott
4. Chad: ‘You have to actively add someone as a “friend” and it is not forced upon you….’
This article reminds me of a news report I saw in late ’08 after the mortgage meltdown here in Phoenix. After dozens of small loan originators had gone out of biz here – loan documents started popping up in DUMPSTERS all over the valley.
It broke about a dozen different statutes – but there wasn’t anyone out there enforcing these laws. Hense lots of very personal info (SSN & income info) was out in the open. It made no difference if these loan applicants were in default, in danger of default, or in good standing.
The system just broke down because of these fly by night opperators. And consumers were completely at the mercy of whether the info got destroyed or fell into the hands of criminals who abused them.
Anyone who believes in a constitutional right today when it comes to privacy is a village idiot. That right only exhists in reality to the extent you have money and are vigilant in safegarding(ie spending your money) to protect yourself.
This article is just one more vivid example.
In the old days of Myspace and personal web pages young people just published everything to everyone everywhere so I still think Facebook is an improvement.
If people are so concerned with privacy, why take part in a photograph in the first place?
As for anyone photographed without permission, the question then becomes–is what you do in the public eye really “private”? No, just like with the debate over Google Maps streetview, people are just mad that their public antics are discovered by those whom they intended not to know. A good example is the cheating husband whose car was photographed on Google where it shouldn’t have been.
Look, technology hasn’t nearly caught us up to the old days–when your neighbors knew everything about you because they lived near you, knew your children, etc. So if Sarah Smith was seen at John Doe’s house, someone soon reported this to Mr. and Mrs. Smith.
Look, I’m tired of the reflexive libertarian response to everything being an “invasion of privacy.” For something to be truly private is for NO ONE ELSE TO SEE IT. If you’re getting trashed at a bar, some guy takes a photo, and it winds up getting tagged online, this is not an invasion of privacy. It’s embarassing, yes, but it’s public conduct.
I’d be happy to explain this further to anyone who isn’t grasping the concept.
It is compulsively predatory.
“The only mistakes we saw were when someone was ID’ed, but it was actually their twin brother or sister.”
You mean this app can’t tell the difference between me and my twin sister, even with my sideburns?
Doesn’t sound like anything to worry about.
15. gus3:
LOL! Are you sure your sister doesn’t have sideburns?
I participate online as a commenter in lots of communities, but almost always anonymously. Hell, I’ve even written some *fanfiction*.
My wife is a big Facebooker now, and I made sure she configured the security/privacy settings properly.
But I don’t really use it myself as I don’t like the “worlds colliding” (Seinfeld reference).
people have different subgroups of friends and acquaintances who only partially overlap, if at all. Facebook by contrast tends to pt them all int he same bucket, unless you take on a lot of cumbersome micromanagement.
Fortunately the colleges are starting to include warning incoming freshman about the dangers (to reputation, and yes, to safety) of no using FB etc wisely.
Facebook a dream of tyrants of old and a reality for those of today.