Facebook Filed a Patent To Predict Your Household's Demographics Based On Family Photos (buzzfeednews.com) 98
An anonymous reader quotes a report from BuzzFeed News: Facebook has submitted a patent application for technology that would predict who your family and other household members are, based on images and captions posted to Facebook, as well as your device information, like shared IP addresses. The application, titled "Predicting household demographics based on image data," was originally filed May 10, 2017, and made public today. The system Facebook proposes in its patent application would use facial recognition and learning models trained to understand text to help Facebook better understand whom you live with and interact with most. The technology described in the patent looks for clues in your profile pictures on Facebook and Instagram, as well as photos of you that you or your friends post.
It would note the people identified in a photo, and how frequently the people are included in your pictures. Then, it would assess information from comments on the photos, captions, or tags (#family, #mom, #kids) -- anything that indicates whether someone is a husband, daughter, cousin, etc. -- to predict what your family/household actually looks like. According to the patent application, Facebook's prediction models would also analyze "messaging history, past tagging history, [and] web browsing history" to see if multiple people share IP addresses (a unique identifier for every internet network). A Facebook spokesperson said in response to the story, "We often seek patents for technology we never implement, and patents should not be taken as an indication of future plans."
It would note the people identified in a photo, and how frequently the people are included in your pictures. Then, it would assess information from comments on the photos, captions, or tags (#family, #mom, #kids) -- anything that indicates whether someone is a husband, daughter, cousin, etc. -- to predict what your family/household actually looks like. According to the patent application, Facebook's prediction models would also analyze "messaging history, past tagging history, [and] web browsing history" to see if multiple people share IP addresses (a unique identifier for every internet network). A Facebook spokesperson said in response to the story, "We often seek patents for technology we never implement, and patents should not be taken as an indication of future plans."
Could be a huge amount of data to glean (Score:4, Interesting)
When image recognition gets really good, you can get even more info than is laid out here - you can probably nearly 100% recognition of any brands worn or displayed prominently.
You could probably guess really well how much a family makes by knowing the brands of clothes they generally wear, and what kinds of cars they drive...
In fact, take that a step further. (Score:5, Interesting)
Just had a second thought - apply that to photos everywhere in general. Now you don't just know the demographics of a family, but of every neighborhood in every city on Earth thanks to geotagged photos from all over the place. You can see what parts of town are driving 2011 Honda Civics and where are the brand new Mercedes. Even if you yourself never post a single photo on Facebook and avoid being tagged, just your address alone will fit into some neat demographic slot that will say everything about you you did not want to reveal.
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Even better. Someone tricks the algorithm into thinking they are poor and can't afford anything, so everything online begins dropping prices.
I can't wait for the day all this stuff gets aggregated and stuck together, and the public goes absolute ape-shazbot feeding the beast bad data intentionally. The network effects would be unreal. Advertisers will literally demand Fraud convictions for wearing a Cheap watch with "Gucci" taped over the tag.
Re: In fact, take that a step further. (Score:1)
Shops will open where you can dress in expensive clothes to be photographed. With your choice of location plugged into a GPS sim.
Re: In fact, take that a step further. (Score:2)
Already been done: https://spectrum.ieee.org/cars... [ieee.org]
Very biased statistics (Score:2)
Now you don't just know the demographics of a family, but of every neighborhood in every city on Earth
Not true. First you only know about neighbourhoods which have a significant number of Facebook users and secondly you only know about those demographics that use Facebook. Those at both ends of the IT spectrum will probably not show up much at all i.e. those with not enough IT knowledge to use it and those with enough IT knowledge to know better than to use it given its horrendous implications for privacy (of which this patent is an excellent example).
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Not true. First you only know about neighbourhoods which have a significant number of Facebook users
All it takes is one Facebook user in a neighborhood (or nearby) posting pictures to canvas an entire neighborhood or region of a city. You can grab a lot of information from todays fairly hi-res camera phone shots by looking at the background.
you only know about those demographics that use Facebook
If enough pictures are taken outside my house often enough, it will not matter if I am on Facebook or not - face
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I thought this was a higher-IQ demographic. I may need to rethink.
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People on Slashdot still use Facebook?
I thought this was a higher-IQ demographic. I may need to rethink.
People don't use Facebook, Facebook uses people regardless of whether said people ever created a Facebook account/profile.
Perhaps some feel they might as well use some of the features since they're already in the Facebook Matrix whether they wanted to be or not.
Strat
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When image recognition gets really good, you can get even more info than is laid out here - you can probably nearly 100% recognition of any brands worn or displayed prominently.
You could probably guess really well how much a family makes by knowing the brands of clothes they generally wear, and what kinds of cars they drive...
The problem is people make it up. They go into debt to maintain the appearances of success, when their lives in fact are a misery. How can your extract meaningful demographic data when large swats of the population live a life of self-dellusion and lies?
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So you're saying this was the one step too far for you? They weren't creeps already?
Ballsy (Score:4, Interesting)
"We often seek patents for technology we never implement, and patents should not be taken as an indication of future plans."
That sounds suspiciously like proudly admitting to being a patent troll.
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I'm still waiting for that promised Linux support for the Occulus Rift...
Re: (Score:2)
VR is a pleb technology. Plebs don't even know Linux exists even know they use it daily. You have a better chance of Steam supporting VR on linux but then I think that will probably be limited to the Vive.
Re:Ballsy (Score:5, Insightful)
That sounds suspiciously like proudly admitting to being a patent troll.
It is actual a form of oligarchy. All the big tech firms build patent portfolios, and then sign cross licensing agreements. So they are free to innovate. But individuals and small companies are locked out, and are likely to step on a legal landmine no matter what they do.
In America, the proportion of wealth going to labor has been falling, and the proportion going to owners of capital has been climbing. A naive person might think this means it is smart to invest in factories and equipment. But this is wrong. Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft all have very few hard assets. The "capital" that is richly rewarded by our economic system is mostly intellectual property.
Re: Ballsy (Score:1)
Apple has that giant glass "Heaven's Gate" building. It's a pretty substantial physical thing. And it's interesting to ponder what it will be used for after Apple goes bust.
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Apple has that giant glass "Heaven's Gate" building.
$5B/$1T = 0.5% of Apple's market cap.
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"We often seek patents for technology we never implement, and patents should not be taken as an indication of future plans."
However, the spokesman never said they weren't going to implement this technology. They are trying to downplay the patent because of the sensitivity of people about their privacy. Classic misdirection. "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain".
Other statements of misdirection.
so what is the novel step here? (Score:1)
This just sounds like a lot of data analysis (text and images) and some domain knowledge. A team of data analysts with skills common in the field should be able to do this.
Playing defence isn't enough (Score:5, Insightful)
It's time to start actively creating misinformation on one's social media presence. Since we can't protect our personal information from these Big Brother wannabe's, we have to at least degrade its reliability, and therefore its value.
I wonder how long will it be before those idiots who proudly proclaim "If you use Facebook, you deserve what you get" have their noses rubbed in the fact that owning a cell phone and being friends with anybody who does have a Facebook profile is enough to hand them quite a lot of personal information.
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Well done for seeing ahead. We used to have a certain level of "herd anonymity". The pure information sorting power of today's computers has largely stripped that away. If what I've read is accurate, the NSA is capable of monitoring literally every telephone conversation on the continent (and probably more). That's not to say they look closely at all of them, but I'm sure somebody's peeking at people who have no idea they're even on anybody's radar.
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We used to have a certain level of "herd anonymity". The pure information sorting power of today's computers has largely stripped that away.
Right...
If what I've read is accurate, the NSA is capable of monitoring literally every telephone conversation on the continent (and probably more). That's not to say they look closely at all of them, but I'm sure somebody's peeking at people who have no idea they're even on anybody's radar.
But go back to your first point. The pure information sorting power of today's computers has largely made it possible to "look closely" at all of those phone conversations. Every single one gets converted to text and checked for suspicious phrases, probably using a simple scoring system. Then they check the top calls in more detail, based on how many they can afford to check and starting with the highest score. I mean, I don't know that this is what they are doing, but why would they do anything els
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More and more, I'm starting to think that old hardware...the stuff that existed before they were building back doors right into the motherboards and CPU's...is going to start appreciating in value. At least make the bastards work for their money.
Re:Playing defence isn't enough (Score:5, Funny)
It's time to start actively creating misinformation on one's social media presence. Since we can't protect our personal information from these Big Brother wannabe's, we have to at least degrade its reliability, and therefore its value.
This is what I do too. To mislead them, I only visit websites I don't like, and I only buy things I don't want.
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Anybody who has a girlfriend has already bought a whole bunch of stuff they don't like.
Oh, crap. Wait. I forgot where I was commenting. "Anybody who has a girlfriend". LOL.
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I did that right after deleting all of my photos and personal info and before disabling my account. My 30 days should be up soon and my account will be gone. Good riddance to that, Instagram, and Twitter.
Not that I'm not in the same place as you, (waiting for my 30 days now,) but if you believe your account, or anything you deleted from Facebook, is gone; I've got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
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I hear Trump is going to put up a picture of God as a family photo.
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I doubt he would even recognize Her.
Ingenius response from spokesperson (Score:3)
"We often seek patents for technology we never implement, and patents should not be taken as an indication of future plans."
This is absolutely correct for many tech corporations. If you can preempt an innovation that would benefit someone else, you are a step ahead; even if you never use the patent. The most important feature of patents is not that you can make new and better products; it is that you can prevent others from doing that [unless they are willing to pay you for the right].
Of course Fb could use this idea to generate profit. That doesn't change the correctness of the above statement.
How can we justify the need to use your data? (Score:1)
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Now I feel even better I have never had a Facebook account of any kind.
I feel even better in that I once opened an account (in order to communicate with someone at the time) with entirely false information. The only thing they might have had right was my IP address but that has changed twice since then.
Accusations of racism in 3... 2... (Score:1)
If Facebook is gathering demographic data based on family photos then I suspect the algorithm will be taking into account skin color and all the factors that correlate with it. Income and skin tone correlate but just because they correlate does not mean any individual will fit. Generally speaking the darker the skin the lower the income. Now, stating that correlation, even with the disclaimer I gave before it, I'm sure someone is going to scream at me about how their black neighbors live in a nice house
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Accusations of racism in 3... 2...
Well, the 1 never happened. You get far more whining on slashdot about accusations of racism than you get actual accusations of racism.
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My dad was quite upset when he called from his million dollar home ..[and] customer service representative suggested that the poor reception might be from the metal roof on his mobile home... You see he lived his life paying everything in cash or with store credit.. He never had a credit card because he never needed one. When he got a cell phone they had no credit history ..
Someone once did a spoof of the Duke of Edinburgh applying for a credit card. He was refused because :
Unemployed
Lives on state support
Status depends on wife
Doesn't own a home [state provides one - or several actually]
No fixed address [moves between different castles and palaces]
No previous credit card
And no spending history whatsoever [his flunkies do his purchases]
Assume this technology will be implemented (Score:1)
This story pushed me to delete my Facebook account (Score:1)
I've kept my Facebook account around for nonsense reasons despite the fact that I never use it and in the last couple of years have only logged in to see if it had been hacked in whatever the contemporaneous security incident was. This story pushed me to delete my account permanently.
You should do the same: https://deletefacebook.com
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Test of wisdom (Score:1)
I agree with you, but your comment comes off like one from "the dude who doesn't own a television and won't shut up about it."
(disclaimer- I don't own a television that's been plugged in in more than 6 months. )
Is it really worth it? (Score:2)
One day soon someone will realise that this info is not worth what it is purported to. It is only worth "billions" (we are assured) because Facebook (and their like) can find buyers who will pay billions for it, and they buy it because they can find further buyers who will pay billions for it, and so on until in the end the info is provided as a service or retailed to smaller businesses who collectively pay even more billions for it.
But whether it brings value to those end users anywhere near what they pay
how long? (Score:2)
If it has not been said yet... (Score:2)