You can not hide

It always happens. You receive a notice from Facebook informing you that one of your friends has pointed to you as someone has uploaded it.

The company introduced a signal feature in 2010, and since then, all images - thousands, even millions, or even billions of them - have been slowly building something new. What are you building? Facebook announced this week. Now, when someone uploads a photo to you, Facebook will recognize you by themselves, without reference to human intervention.

"Now, if you're in a downloaded image, we'll let you know, even if your name is not mentioned," the company said in a blog post released this week announcing new features in face recognition technology.

"You've got the power to control your photo on Facebook. You can make choices like bookmarking yourself or not, or even communicating with the person who posted the photo if you have any concerns about it."

From the point of view, it can be argued that this did not come completely out of nowhere. By the end, Facebook has already used face recognition technology for years to get features such as motion signaling and photo organizing, which other technology giants like Google and Apple use their own versions of this technology in their photo-owned applications.

But from a different point of view, this is quite different, because Facebook is not just about image processing - it's the world's largest social network, with more than 2 billion active users per month starting this year.

So cutting the human element out of something personal like getting to know people's faces ensures that it has a big impact on how people use the site - and also tells us how powerful face recognition is in Facebook technology, fueled by the billions of our photos we voluntarily submitted to the company With reference to the people in them, so far of course).

"Facial recognition technology on Facebook has become so powerful that it can recognize you in any picture and anywhere, even if there is no reason to expect to find your face in that picture," says Kashmir Hill in Gizmodo.

"It's easy to identify your face if Facebook searches only about you between photos uploaded from your friends. But it's harder if the search scope is more than a billion people, which is the user base on Facebook. "

But this does not mean that the new system is infallible.

According to project manager Nippon Mathur of the company's automated learning group, facial recognition technology will not recognize you if your face appears at a 90 degree angle, although it can recognize you without a full view of your face if it has enough data About you.

The way the new feature works is as follows. If an image you have access to is automatically recognized (according to the image settings provided by the uploader), Facebook will send you a notice that there is a new "may include" image. From there, you can choose to mark your name or ignore the image.

If you want to disable recognition on your face completely, it will be easy to do this, the company says. All you need is access to your account settings, and there you'll find a "Run / Close" button that will allow you to deactivate the tool, which is turned on by default - unless you have previously unsubscribed from the current features to recognize the face.

But this technique will not be available everywhere. They are currently not available in Canada or the EU because of privacy laws in these countries. But in most other places, your face is a target for exploitation.
For most people, the new feature may turn into a convenient way to find photos for themselves they have not noticed, just because no one has referred to them. But now, the new algorithm will protect your back, and these images will not be able to pass unnoticed.

However, it is worth noting that if you decide to unsubscribe and restore your face from Facebook, you will lose access to the company's new identity management options this week as well.

These new options include the ability to notify you when someone uploads a picture of you as a profile picture - a move to prevent people from impersonating others, which is actually a very good idea.

This step can be very useful for security purposes, but if you choose to uninstall facial recognition technology, you will not get this protection - which has prompted some to criticize as a step to keep you from turning off technology.

"It's a hidden dilemma in Tuesday's announcement," says Jacob Brugan in Slate.

"If you want to protect yourself on this platform, you have to make yourself prey to their own monitoring tools."

Scientific sources and references

http://www.sciencealert.com/facebook-just-pushed-its-facial-recognition-into-a-bold-new-future-tagged-privacy