Scraping Tinder selfies to make a dataset for AI experiments
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
This guy sounds like a caricature of the exact kind of socially unaware techie who blithely implements dystopian-powering software, because having data and writing code is all that matters apparently. Privacy law admittedly isn't the simplest concept but you have to wonder how blissfully solipsistic someone has to be to write a simple script that scrapes proprietary data without asking himself, "this is so easy, I wonder why no one else has had this idea?"
And then he released the data under CC0, just to add insult to injury by making CC look unethical.
Laws you may not like are still there to be enforced.
At least I didn't publicize it after and removed it when I was done
Zuck?
He then created TheFacebook as an alternative to Harvard's online facebook, which was purportedly in development. The official facebook was taking longer because of worries about scraping of user information [1]:
> Davis said that the principle complication with the creation of an official facebook was figuring out how to design an interface so that directory information could not easily be compiled without authorization.
That said, Zuckerberg's TheFacebook got around that because students apparently were happy to upload their information to his service. And the rest is history.
[0] http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2003/11/4/hot-or-not-websi...
[1] http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2004/2/9/hundreds-register...
The rules governing consent and data of human subjects are even more stringent in academia, hence the existence of institutional review boards.
[0] http://adland.tv/content/virgin-uses-cc-licenced-flickr-phot...
Courts would consider it an overreach, and that specific clause would be nullified.
You can't take everything from another party while offering no compensation and expect a court to uphold it.
EDIT: Disclaimer: Not a lawyer. Not your lawyer.
> It’s also worth noting that in agreeing to the company’s T&Cs Tinder users grant it a “worldwide, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, right and license to host, store, use, copy, display, reproduce, adapt, edit, publish, modify and distribute” their content — though it’s less clear whether that would apply in this case where a third-party developer is scraping Tinder data and releasing it under a public domain license.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consideration
https://nationalparalegal.edu/public_documents/courseware_as...
"The idea of consideration is vital to contract law because, in order for a contract to be enforceable, there must be “mutuality of obligation.” In other words, in order for a contract to be valid, both parties to the contract must be required to perform under the contract. Consideration, which represents the commitment that the parties to the contract make to each other, is at the heart of the “mutuality of obligation” rule and, therefore, without consideration, a contract will not be enforceable."
In contrast, I know that in the EU, architects have copyright on their work, which means you can't photograph the Eiffel Tower at night and share the photo, legally, without consent [2]
As to how you know if your photo is being used commercially...obviously there isn't a push-notification service (yet) that sends an alert to your inbox. You would just have to notice the commercial usage, as what happened when the teenager who was captured in a CC-licensed photo on Flickr found herself in a Virgin Mobile campaign
[0] https://www.cnet.com/news/google-begins-blurring-faces-in-st... (warning, autoplay video)
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vb3IMTJjzfo
http://www.thefrisky.com/2009-07-15/how-sacha-baron-cohen-ke...
[2] http://www.politico.eu/article/banned-taking-pictures-of-the...
It is not the possibility that I might appear in an ad that concerns me, but rather, that the set of photos that contain me in them, could be used correlate way more information than I would ever consent to releasing voluntarily. I would not even notice that happening.
The issue in that case was (IANAL) nothing to do with the CC licensing but with the fact that the photo was used for a commercial (i.e. marketing/advertising) purpose. Those require a model release form, hence the requirement by microstock sites for model releases.
Virgin Mobile messed up in that they used a photo for a marketing campaign that didn't have a model release form either directly or through an agency that had vetted it.
Editorial use in the US at least doesn't require this even though it's commercial use in the sense that a for-profit entity is using the photo to illustrate a story.
[0] http://fairuse.stanford.edu/case/chang-v-virgin-mobile-creat...
[1] https://www.cnet.com/uk/news/more-commercial-creative-common... (Video autoplay, grr.)
Identity is a liability, and a favor that we offer to our peers in order to simplify communication. It does not benefit the person being identified, so much. If I cannot have the identities of the people and projects who consume my data, then I will operate as a fresh, expendable identity.
Not to mention there are several million face dataset available easily. http://megaface.cs.washington.edu
Also there is really no point in attacking him, other than for typical clickbait outrage.
Finally how is this worse than those name and shame Tinder/OKCupid/Jezebel blog posts, or the horrible actions of the Wikileaks/Intercept crooks.
Since so few details about terms of use on the dataset are available, it's reasonable to assume the access control is put up in place for reasons other than bandwidth concerns.
Rather than (edit: in addition to) relying on protection, we should rely on personal safety practices. Using our own portraits as avatars may have been a mistake, in hindsight. I will recommend to my friends, that they teach their children to use a photo of their favorite toy or something, instead of their own face.
I had then created 5 different profiles of same picture, with different shades of skin color. Interesting results. I came to the conclusion that tinder wasn't for me. I had to try good ol' face to face interactions.
I'm sure Tinder and snapchat are a trove of data to help study the science of human mating. Releasing a dataset online is crazy although I wonder what would happen if tinder got hacked and their data published on bittorrent like the fapgate with celebrities that happened a while ago.
A security disaster like that is just waiting to happen.
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/17/findface-...
(because we already had that, and it was a fiasco)
Definitely feels wrong having such easy access to people's pictures; it leads to interesting questions: is your face PII? Do you have ownership rights to your face? What about facial recognition algorithms that use pictures you upload to FB, Instagram, Tinder, etc. to generate, e.g., Haar cascades?
Before computers existed, PII referred to information someone (ie., a human individual) can use to personally identify someone and probably[0] still does. I'd say a picture of someone is a good way to identify someone.
[0] The "probably" is sarcastic. Of course it is PII.
My point is, this kind of thing is already illegal.
Interestingly though, I wouldn't think the same of an instagram scrape. Probably because insta is public by design, while tinder is expected to be local, requires a login and ostensibly is for the purpose of looking for companionship.
There's a difference between public and public domain. Just because something is public, doesn't mean you are free to use it as you wish. You may still require permission to use it for tasks beyond the originally intended purpose.
On instagram, it is a broadcasting and publishing platform and it is very clear that by posting a photo, on a non-private-account the photo can be seen and generally browsed by others.
A researcher who conducts a study of "looking at" 400k public instagram photos is doing a different thing than spoofing their location and auto-swiping through 400k lonely hearts.
Obviously people disagree with this since I'm getting downvotes for my position. This is certainly my opinion But I do feel like running a study against one isn't unethical while the other is.
Of course, that should be caveated that "republishing" the scraped data is unreasonable in both cases (IMO). I also think things like this artist http://fortune.com/2015/05/26/instagram-copyright-art/ are reprehensible... but that's art, not science and doesn't actually have the same expectation to abide by ethical principles.
The keyword is published for "browsing" and other things which are codified. You can't use it for mining data without consent.
I've often said that the sexism issue in tech is overblown (due to various agendas at work) but when you see shit like this (especially in the context of Tinder, a dating app), it's just hard to deny :/
Still, i wonder what sort of pictures the dataset could correlate if convulated with the swipe quota. And if you could post those pictures as tinder profiles, generating a plattform where neural Nets pose as unavailable gods and goddeses of beauty, driving a generation of swingers into depression.
https://theblog.okcupid.com/the-mathematics-of-beauty-51bd25...
https://theblog.okcupid.com/your-looks-and-your-inbox-8715c0...
https://theblog.okcupid.com/race-and-attraction-2009-2014-10...
And there are plenty of people who manage to be both unconventional and creative without making a juvenile joke that amounts to little more than slut shaming women for using a dating app.
And you know- those professionals tend to have a scope-creep when it comes to professionalism. Do not talk about this its offensive, do not talk about that its offensive, do not talk about this invention, it could offend our buisness-partner XY. No, i demand the right to offend. And to be offended. Call me animal names. I prefer that much more to that mental-graveyard of smiles and conservation. Insult is preferable to insulation. Always.
If the church still had power, it would be insulted by da-vincis drawing claiming that humans could handcraft angel-wings. And those intestines- what a insult. And that darwin guy, claiming we where ape-decendants. Insult upon insult. How can any professional gentleman take this kind of talk into there mouth and not demean himself. Outrageous. Take your silk-sheated scissors and censor somehwere else.
Also sorry, but the whole process of human sexual interaction is demeaning, always was always will be. You have drug dealers and drug buyers, trades that go bust, and the attempt to cram the whole messy affair into contracts that should outlast the varous value-curves the trade-goods in the relationship perform. Its hillarious and hellirious. To not joke about this existential absurdity is to not be a selfaware human.
K. Make those jokes about a protected class in a workplace and you might be looking at a lawsuit and lawyer telling you to cool it.
> Call me animal names. I prefer that much more to that mental-graveyard of smiles and conservation. Insult is preferable to insulation. Always.
I don't see why going to the other extreme is any sort of solution. Obviously you don't want to work in a PC culture so you can just avoid those workplaces. There are different levels in various fields and locations.
> To not joke about this existential absurdity is to not be a selfaware human.
I think we all get the joke now. We just don't find it funny. So, forgive us if we don't laugh while you continue exercising your right to free speech, and we can continue living side-by-side.
It's discrimination based on sex and against the law to make the workplace favor one sex.
You may not like that trampling of your free speech rights, but there you have it. We agreed as a society to allow women to enjoy the right to earn their own wages in whatever line of work they choose. Good thing too. There are some super smart women out there who have contributed a lot. Can't believe this needs to be said in 2017 but here we are.
I assume there are jokes that would get under your skin. Perhaps white privilege.
If not, maybe you'd rather we lived in a more combative society. Personally I don't. We need to work from today's society's expectation of civility
To be a adult in my opnion means, to be able to handle a rough outside world that constantly atttacks any firm believe i hold. To utilize courts as a artifical replacement parent to create a protected environment, from facts, from ideas, from the very reality of hostility - that breaks down, once not enough economic shield energy is left- what good is that for.
There is after all still the ability, to stop hugging the cactee, turn off that source of media, sit on a meditating pillow and softly shake your head until the arguments to drive back that opposing view emerge from the subconcious stream.
I want a fightcloub of thoughts, insults are great, if they reveal something on the human condition, on what the person im dealing with really thinks and why it its that way and what society can do to realy change that. Not some ilusion of peace at paper-gunpoint, but a real understanding of what we made of allowing for real advances. Not this potemking village of civility, that falls apart at the first twitter huff and puff.
I meant combative as in leads to physical altercation.
Raising mental tensions can lead to that.
We already have a very open combative philosophical society. You're not jailed for any of your speech. That's not true in much of the world.
Perhaps you consider that a low bar, but, in terms of human development, I'd consider it state-of-the-art.
I agree with you that a lot of society doesn't want open debate. But, it is legal, and if you crave it, there are venues for it. Debate club, politics, or really anywhere. There's a difference between legal and cultural.
The widespread cultural change you're seeking is much more difficult to achieve than simply making open discourse legal. And, arguably, making everyone talk and react the way you want, combatively, goes against your desire for everyone to have freedom to say what they please.
In fact, you have that freedom, you just don't want to deal with the reaction from society.
> To utilize courts as a artifical replacement parent to create a protected environment, from facts, from ideas, from the very reality of hostility - that breaks down, once not enough economic shield energy is left- what good is that for
Civility? If no courts, then what? Only money, and total rule by the wealthy? That doesn't sound sustainable.
The existence of courts naturally leads to upholding our written law, which needs to be interpreted as well as applied.
> There is after all still the ability, to stop hugging the cactee, turn off that source of media, sit on a meditating pillow and softly shake your head until the arguments to drive back that opposing view emerge from the subconcious stream.
If there's one thing on which we agree it's this.
> Not some ilusion of peace at paper-gunpoint, but a real understanding of what we made of allowing for real advances. Not this potemking village of civility, that falls apart at the first twitter huff and puff.
It sounds like you want better communication. I do too. I think we're getting there.
Honestly to me the world doesn't seem so bad, and I'm sure you have hobbies that you enjoy. I'm going to do some today. Hope you will too!