Facebook Contractors Categorize Your Private Posts To Train AI (engadget.com) 63
Facebook uses thousands of third-party staffers around the world to look at Facebook and Instagram posts to help train its AI and to inform new products. "But because the contractors see users' public and private posts, some view it as a violation of privacy," reports Engadget. From the report: According to Reuters, as many as 260 contract workers in Hyderabad, India have spent more than a year labeling millions of Facebook posts dating back to 2014. They look for the subject of the post, the occasion and the author's intent, and Facebook told Reuters, the company uses that information to develop new features and to potentially increase usage and ad revenue. Around the globe, Facebook has as many as 200 similar content labeling projects, many of which are used to train the company's AI.
The contractors working in Hyderabad told Reuters they see everything from text-based status updates to videos, photos and Stories across Facebook and Instagram -- including those that are shared privately. And even as Facebook embarks on its "the future is private" platform, one Facebook employee told Reuters he can't imagine the practice going away. It's a core part of training AI and developing the company's products.
The contractors working in Hyderabad told Reuters they see everything from text-based status updates to videos, photos and Stories across Facebook and Instagram -- including those that are shared privately. And even as Facebook embarks on its "the future is private" platform, one Facebook employee told Reuters he can't imagine the practice going away. It's a core part of training AI and developing the company's products.
At least Google and Amazon don't record us (Score:3)
Hey, it's not like Google and Amazon microphones don't record all our conversations and use those to train their AIs and make funny videos to play at their parties, like FB does, right? ... oh, it's all of them.
Indian IT Contractors! Trustworthy?!? (Score:1)
But surely, they've corrected that problem/issue.
Don't think we need to worry about these Indian IT Contractors -- after all, it IS Facebook doing this, isn't it?
Private posts? (Score:1)
How can there be "private posts" on Facebook, or even the Internet in general? By definition it is on a public network.
Re: (Score:3)
Telecommunications networks (e.g., your landline or cellular phone) are also public networks but conversations conducted over those networks are generally considered private, even to the extent that law enforcement must obtain a court order to listen in when there is evidence of criminality.
AI is "The Turk" (Score:3)
Modern AI is mostly "the mechanical Turk" with a little man inside the box.
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Modern AI is mostly "the mechanical Turk" with a little man inside the box.
You mean it's this guy who's behind all of it? [youtu.be]
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My posts (Score:3)
Used to train AI? Say hello to Tay [wikipedia.org] for me.
Sure (Score:3)
"But because the contractors see users' public and private posts, some view it as a violation of privacy,"
But that's about everybody besides the FB CFO.
Re: (Score:3)
I think it is the people who are both non-technical and uninformed who feel that "marked as private" means "nobody will ever view this" and that corporate views are a violation of privacy.
You don't need to do much digging to find governments around the world are mandating that Facebook and other social media dig into "private" and "unshared" posts. Consider after the New Zealand shooting two months ago their government demanded that private posts are reviewed. That kind of outcry happens after any kind of
You can't get there from here! (Score:3)
No, you can't get there from here. In the case of Facebook, "there" means the place of respecting people's privacy and "here" means a business model based on selling people's private information.
If you start from a different place, there are better solutions. The most obvious one is to ask. And politely. If the computer is having trouble understanding what I said, the computer should ASK ME what I said. No good reason to drag other people into the loop.
That sort of solution approach is completely different from sending a recording of what I said to some mysterious stranger. It's still kind of iffy because I'm not sure how much I want to trust any of Facebook's computers, but it's vastly superior than exploiting a gigantic ToS that says Facebook can record my voice and other personal information and do whatever they want with it, including sending it to other people.
My own "here" is the belief that it's all a scam, and an increasingly unsustainable one. At the root is confusion about time. The original idea of stock markets did NOT include the idea of profit maximization based on gaming the time. I even think the idea of shorting a stock for profit would have been anathema to Adam Smith. One of today's headlines described the stock price recovery as some sort of surprise? In a flying pig's eye.
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It bears repeating (Score:5, Informative)
I completely agree this would qualify as a privacy violation - if you were paying for the service. But since you're getting the service for free, it's merely something you agreed to in exchange for not having to pay for the service. If you don't like it, don't use Facebook. I pay for my own website and hosting, and don't have to put up with BS like this. In fact my agreement with my hosting service explicitly states that aside from making backups, transferring to new equipment, and in response to warrants by law enforcement (it's a U.S. host), they don't read or access my data other than what's necessary to provide the hosting service.
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Your content (Score:1)
Its not a communications system when your content is getting looked at.
"At Facebok the future is private" -MZ (Score:5, Funny)
LOL.. just kidding... dumb fucks!!
Backup and delete all your posts periodically (Score:2)
It's for exactly situations like this. Facebook download "life" option lets you back up all you've posted/commented/liked, then use Social Book Post manager to undo everything you've done in three clicks. You end up with a blank slate, a full list of contacts, a full backup of your and your friends' and "friends" wise and witty posts and comments on your hard disk, and all your posts gone, meaning FB would have to be arsed to retrieve them if they needed them which they won't.
Even if they were to ban you fo
Re: (Score:2)
If you really believe that, you're much more trusting than I am, which is one of the many reasons I've never had a Facebook account and never will.
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Let's say I liked something once, and now I unlike it. I would imagine a like is implemented as a flag, rather then a record. So if a 3rd party requests all the pages I like, they will get nothing if all I once liked is now unliked. I have no doubt Facebook itself can get the list of everything I ever liked, but Facebook would need to look at me specifically, which they won't do. I also believe they won't give the 3rd party the pages I once liked but don't like anymore, presumably because there is no valuab
Re: (Score:2)
If so, you have a lot more faith in their willingness to put their user's privacy ahead of the chance for profit than I do. At first, I decided not to get involved with Facebook because I didn't see any need for it; now, I see nothing but reasons to stay away. Facebook's source of income is data mining; why do you think that they'd honor your request to fo
Re: (Score:2)
I don't think they'd honor anything -- just that they wouldn't bother making an extra step of listing my records that are flagged as "deleted" unless I were an important person. A 3rd party mechanical turk reads everyone's posts, including private ones, for anyone thrown at them, and when he comes to my account he sees nothing. He could tell FB hey this guy has nothing on his accounts, can you give me his deleted posts, but they'd say we're busy, unless he's Assange don't bother us.
I read that as: (Score:3)
Facebook Contractors Categorize Your Private Parts To Train AI
And it didn't jump out at me as unreasonably odd
WhatsApp probably too (Score:1)
WhatsApp messages. Does anybody believe those are private and not read and used for training AI as well? âItâ(TM)s end-to-end encryptedâ - but with whose keys?
ah (Score:2)
as many as 260 contract workers in Hyderabad, India have spent more than a year labeling millions of Facebook posts dating back to 2014. They look for the subject of the post, the occasion and the author's intent,
Even apart from the privacy implications, what could wrong there, lol!
Language and culture are magically not barriers, because we don't want them to be! Presto, like magic!
You thought your posts on Facebook were private? (Score:2)
Oh, my sweet sunmmer child...