That’s not accurate. If you are not a user or don’t have the FaceRec setting on, we will not create a Face Template and won’t be able to recognize you in pictures.
Source/Disclaimer: I work at FB and this feature is managed by my team.
Source/Disclaimer: I work at FB and this feature is managed by my team.
And while I do want to trust you, I can’t trust that the company/industry itself wouldn’t figure out a way to exploit it at a later date :(
It really does make me sad that I can’t trust what you’re saying, i think a fundamental part of humanity is wanting that level of trust, and it’s been intentionally exploited.
How do you feel working at Facebook? Do you feel pressure from your peers on the outside about the moral compass of the company?
Maybe you can't answer these things if you aren't using a throwaway account, but I'm very interested in hearing how Facebook employees perceive the company themselves, as well as how they're treated by company outsiders.
My impression is that a lot of engineers are opposed to how Facebook operates and that this reputation must make recruiting and retention difficult.
See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19036507 or https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20768607
> Do you feel pressure from your peers on the outside about the moral compass of the company?
Pressure is too strong a word. I do get into discussions with friends and family on the topic.
> My impression is that a lot of engineers are opposed to how Facebook operates and that this reputation must make recruiting and retention difficult.
That's mostly not accurate. Remember that these engineers can freely express their opinion internally or question Zuck live every week.
In machine learning and computer vision they are a very desired company to work at, at least on the research side of things (FAIR). They have very good people and world famous ones, lots of powerful hardware to work with etc. I'm sure they have no problem with recruiting brilliant people from all over the world.
Edit: not to be snarky, because I'm pretty sure that wasn't your intention, but it sounded like you were doing exactly this:
> This cleverly gives facebook some cover. Bob might ask facebook, "don't use my face to surveil my friends", but facebook can say "how could we possibly do that? We don't associate your face with your account, so we can't associate your face with your preference, even if we wanted to."
Everyone understands how opting out works and what it means (I mean, some of your bosses pretend they don't, but even they do). Of course you can't create a template when the setting that disables template creation is on. The question is what do you do with data that you inferred in the past, and what kind of privacy can be expected if you opt out of a feature after it's been used. That's particularly important given this industry's history of opting in for you.
In the case you describe, Facebook no longer creates a Face Template, that is some kind of ML model of your face that could be used to recognize it or identify that you are the same person appearing across new pictures.
But I can’t say Facebook no longer has a record of your face. It still has some pictures, uploaded by your friends, where you appear. It won’t know that it's you OR and if your friends upload two pictures where you appear, it won't know that the same person is in both unless they tag you manually (which they can only do if you are user and authorize them - but that's a different setting).
If I understand correctly, when facebook detects faces, it does something like...
compare face to all Face Templates
if match
associate picture and face with matched user
(maybe also update Face Template of matched user)
else
discard data structures created during compare
(maybe mark face as "already compared")
I don't think we go back to old photos, I suspect it would not be practical. But I am not positive on this one.
When a face -- which is unknown to Facebook -- is found in a photo, is that face used for graph building? Is a anonymous representation of it kept?
I don't see how it could work any other way.