"The camera is always on..."
December 15, 2017 12:32 PM   Subscribe

22. Facebook wants you to send it your nudes, so it can block other people from posting those nudes as revenge porn.
As a revenge-porn prevention measure, you can upload your nudes to Facebook through Messenger, then Facebook will digitally scan them using machine learning and block anyone else from uploading that exact same photo. Facebook says they're not storing the photos anywhere; they'll only store a digital "hash" of it (basically a 1s and 0s version). Buuuut...at least one employee has to see the photos to moderate it and verify it's actually a nude and not like, a photo of Trump.
35 Times Privacy Was A Lie In 2017 [Katie Notopoulos, BuzzFeed]
posted by Atom Eyes (77 comments total) 23 users marked this as a favorite
 
Man, that facebook nude-looking-at job...

It's like a chicken sexer but... I can't decide if it'd be better or worse to look at bazillion of nudes a week vs squeezing / sexing a million or two baby chicks a month.
posted by RolandOfEld at 12:35 PM on December 15, 2017 [5 favorites]


All the Captain Picard “what in the actual fuck” memes go here.
posted by Annika Cicada at 12:37 PM on December 15, 2017 [11 favorites]


I can't even bring myself to imagine the snickering sneering douchebro at facebook who suggested that "feature".
posted by poffin boffin at 12:39 PM on December 15, 2017 [8 favorites]


> ... go here.

I must posses those memes, and if that means destroying your ship in the process, so be it!
posted by I-Write-Essays at 12:46 PM on December 15, 2017


I cannot fucking believe that "send us your nudes ahead of time" idea. It's like the time that TSA promised us that their officers would not laugh at our body scans (spoiler: they did).

That Netflix tweet did not amuse me. Jesus Christ, dude. The likeliest thing is that it was on in the background somewhere, maybe at a business, for seasonal background noise. Or that maybe a kid watched it; kids have to watch everything over and over. Anyway, I hated the way it made me feel, especially because it did make me laugh for just a second.

(The other night it occurred to me that if Archive of Our Own ever puts reading habits on blast, a generation of young women is going to go have to live in a cave.)
posted by Countess Elena at 12:46 PM on December 15, 2017 [13 favorites]


If the best way you can describe a digital hash is "basically a 1s and 0s version" then perhaps you shouldn't be writing about it.
posted by ElKevbo at 12:47 PM on December 15, 2017 [40 favorites]


I think it's high time to prevent any corporation from storing any information, ever. Even their boards will have to have surgery to remove their long-term memories. Does that seem harsh? You should have thought about that before 2010, guys. Now, line up at the clinic door.
posted by GenjiandProust at 12:48 PM on December 15, 2017 [10 favorites]


Can this be labeled "marginally NSFW"? There are a few images in that article that aren't quite nudity, but definitely might garner a "WTF" if a coworker walked by.
posted by explosion at 12:49 PM on December 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


I cannot fucking believe that "send us your nudes ahead of time" idea.

That's how matching works though - you have to have something to match it to. You could do it ex post (heh) facto, but that allows the image to remain up until gets reported and added to the filter database. Sending the nudes allows for preloading the filter database.

Youtube and such use the same or similar tech for songs and other copyrighted information, which leads to hilarity when the postives are false, but does work reasonably well given the state of the art.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 12:54 PM on December 15, 2017


As a revenge-porn prevention measure, you can upload your nudes to Facebook

I can see no way in which this carefully laid plan could ever fail

posted by happyroach at 12:56 PM on December 15, 2017 [7 favorites]


I'd continue my research into living off the grid, but it doesn't really matter because they're just going to find me anyway.
posted by elsietheeel at 12:57 PM on December 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


in order to protect your credit card and social security numbers from fraud you should send them to me so i can make sure no one else has them
posted by poffin boffin at 12:58 PM on December 15, 2017 [34 favorites]


I'm not saying it doesn't make sense in a spherical-cow sort of way, Pogo_Fuzzybutt. And certainly I have credit card numbers and other sensitive info in databases out in the world that I have to trust in order to sleep at night (such as I can). But if those numbers get out, I have recourse; I have insurance, fraud protections, and so forth. I wouldn't be sexually shamed for life.
posted by Countess Elena at 12:59 PM on December 15, 2017 [2 favorites]


Facebookquifax?
posted by clawsoon at 1:02 PM on December 15, 2017 [4 favorites]


Yeah, don't follow the cookie crumbs to Facebook's house in the woods, those shingles are not icing, and there is no cake. Now there are four great lies, 4. Send yer nudes to Facebook, along with your eye prints, your facial architecture.
posted by Oyéah at 1:02 PM on December 15, 2017


I know I should be scared of/have hate for the Google Maps thing—but I just looked at it and it showed me the routes my wife and I walked on our very first trip to NYC before we were married. Daily life now is basically just a "Black Mirror" episode without the credits and Welsh accents, but even those can be poignant and wonderful sometimes.
posted by littlerobothead at 1:02 PM on December 15, 2017 [6 favorites]


That's how matching works though

Sure, but that's not the only possible way to prevent revenge porn. If you are afraid someone will post photos (which you might not even have a copy of), facebook could monitor that person's account, for example. They won't because it's expensive and they don't actually give a shit.
posted by Emmy Rae at 1:02 PM on December 15, 2017 [4 favorites]


Uber had a massive customer data breech, and didn't tell anyone for a year.

It was so bad the data were coming out backwards?
posted by peeedro at 1:05 PM on December 15, 2017 [9 favorites]


*chuckles*

You all make fun of the nude blocking feature. You should sit down for a moment, and consider they actually arrived at the solution of least damage.

The reality is that revenge porn is a real problem, with real fatalities. Suicide is a major killer in this age group, and it's not driven by trusted social network employees verifying photos. It's driven by peer group mockery and harassment.

You think Facebook doesn't see a horrifying number of nude photos a day already? Because they do. There's a real child pornography problem out there, and there are a lot of people with far out looks in their eye, doing what they can to whack that mole.

The solution can't be entirely blinded, because the trolls would pretty much instantly consume it. The hard truth -- if you sit down for a moment -- is that people need a way to say, I broke up with someone, don't let them hurt me.

Facebook said OK, and took a tremendous amount of crap from people who didn't think about it.

Please, think about it.
posted by effugas at 1:12 PM on December 15, 2017 [23 favorites]


I think someone at FB HQ, probably wore a shirt that said,

FBI: Facebook Boob Inspector

And this idea became reality.
posted by FJT at 1:16 PM on December 15, 2017 [6 favorites]


But if those numbers get out, I have recourse; I have insurance, fraud protections, and so forth. I wouldn't be sexually shamed for life.

I'm imagining that it's a more useful service in the case where the photos exist on one or more services (say instagram or whatever) already and you'd like to prevent them from proliferating to FB.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 1:21 PM on December 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


The thing about the 'send fb nudes' feature is that you could certainly self-censor the image before sending it to them, and their magic neural net could absolutely match revenge porn images based on the similarity. It's not that I think this is a good idea; it's just crazy if it doesn't work exactly like that.
posted by destructive cactus at 1:21 PM on December 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


I'm pretty alarmed that anyone in their right mind would believe facebook when they say that they're not storing the actual images alongside your name and all other personal data which will be sold to whomever wishes to purchase it for whatever reason they want, or stolen and widely disseminated by whoever is bored one afternoon.

as always this kind of naivety makes me want to turn to a gleeful life of horrible crime
posted by poffin boffin at 1:31 PM on December 15, 2017 [14 favorites]


they'll only store a digital "hash"

It'd should (at some point, say march) be possible to provide users a local tool (open source/independently validated) that creates the "hash" locally and just the hash is uploaded to FB (or preferably a trusted third party digital escrow service). The way it's presented seems wacky but there's a kernel of an approach to solving a real problem.
posted by sammyo at 1:36 PM on December 15, 2017 [12 favorites]


Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard

Zuck: Just ask.

Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS

[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one?

Zuck: People just submitted it.

Zuck: I don't know why.

Zuck: They "trust me"

Zuck: Dumb fucks.
posted by Drexen at 1:37 PM on December 15, 2017 [22 favorites]


I've thought about it. Why didn't they release a software that did the hash client side so you could just send the hash? Why don't they hire moderators to police accounts? Why don't they take responsibility for the damage done to people on their platform?
posted by Uncle at 1:40 PM on December 15, 2017 [12 favorites]


I would imagine the problem with storing a digital hash (and those of you who think that should be done locally are right) is that there is no way to spot variations on the image, whereas having the original allows you to match images that have been resized, cropped, or even just saved with a different level of compression.

I won't say that it's impossible, because I don't know the field at all, but I would imagine that it is at least very hard to find variations of image X without having access to the raw data that makes up image X.
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 1:43 PM on December 15, 2017


> Why don't they take responsibility for the damage done to people done in their platform?

Because that would cripple investment, and that's just not an acceptable sacrifice.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 1:43 PM on December 15, 2017 [2 favorites]


I never could understand "revenge" nudes. Doesn't your former partner know exactly where they came from? How does having someone hate you beyond hate work out for these people in the end?
posted by Brocktoon at 1:47 PM on December 15, 2017


The thing about the 'send fb nudes' feature is that you could certainly self-censor the image before sending it to them
I was thinking about what would happen without this system if you wanted to report to FB that someone was posting your nude photos. You'd have to tell them who, when, where to an extent that would allow them to go find the offender and the proof, and they would see the actual image at that point.

The self-censored idea makes it possible to avoid even that - they can give you a tool that lets you self-censor, and then even their reviewer need only see a version of the offending content that has also been censored in the same way. So you would be even less exposed than you are now.
posted by pulposus at 1:49 PM on December 15, 2017


I've thought about it. Why didn't they release a software that did the hash client side so you could just send the hash? Why don't they hire moderators to police accounts? Why don't they take responsibility for the damage done to people on their platform?

Because abuse. A user could then just hash a bunch of legitimate pictures and FB would block them.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 1:50 PM on December 15, 2017 [5 favorites]


Yeah, the client-side hash would be a no-go because you could use that to stop other users from uploading literally any photo you have a copy of (including things you have no right to stop people from using). An imagine recognition engine aimed at detecting whether or not it is a nude without a human involved would be...potentially okay...except I'd guess they already have that test deployed for normal uploads and they certainly don't work 100% of the time hence the revenge porn issue in the first place.
posted by mosst at 2:00 PM on December 15, 2017


You do not actually need to send FB your nudes for them to do a reasonable job at keeping nudes out. If there is fancy enough image recognition for cars to drive themselves (or even get close) or for facial recognition to work on your phone, there is fancy enough image recognition to identify nudes. (I mean, they would probably start off only making it work for white people, but that's a totally different problem.)

And, since nudes are not allowed on Facebook (see all the breastfeeding ladies who got their photos censored), you don't really have the issue of sorting through legit and non-legit nudes.

So no. They do not in fact need your nudes.

Source: I am a programmer who did some image projects like one time and also I possess critical thinking skills.
posted by dame at 2:01 PM on December 15, 2017 [23 favorites]


So to summarize the Facebook conundrum:
  • There's terrible stuff on Facebook that needs to be filtered out.
  • They can't filter it out manually because there's just too much stuff on Facebook. This is by design. They want people to share stuff and they don't want to care what it is. So they need an automated solution.
  • Automated filtering solutions are crappy, miss too much stuff and gaming AI's is a hobby of the worst people, so humans have to be involved.
  • So they crowdsource the tuning of the filters by letting people add things that they want to be removed.
  • But they can't trust crowds not to abuse this system as well, I mean they can't be blocking popular images of political figures by the disgruntled public, so they have to filter what's going into filters.
So we arrive at the creation of a filter-on-a-filter. It's small enough that it can be manually tuned by employees gig-economy contractors looking at nudes all day in order to remove perfectly acceptable images. Aside from being deeply creepy... what an incredibly weird job description. "My job is to make sure that we ONLY have nudes in our nude filter. And what do you do?"
posted by rouftop at 2:02 PM on December 15, 2017 [2 favorites]


The biggest problem with having users send in hashes is that there's nothing to keep a user from sending in a hash of totally innocent pictures just to fuck with people uploading them.

The solution Facebook proposed (send us your nudes!) is a lousy solution, but it was developed to try and deal with a real problem.
posted by sotonohito at 2:05 PM on December 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


I don't deny that the logical syllogism by which this solution was arrived at follows from the assumptions. The issue is that the assumptions are CRAAAAAAZY.

If Facebook actually wanted to take responsibility for the harm they're causing, they pretty much can't do it short of shutting down operations, razing their data centers to the ground, and going home.

Their business model is fundamentally based on abuse and stalking. Nothing they do can ever be trusted, because their reason for being is to obtain everyone's most personal data, create profiles on them, and sell it to the highest bidder.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 2:20 PM on December 15, 2017 [6 favorites]


If Facebook actually wanted to take responsibility for the harm they're causing, they pretty much can't do it short of shutting down operations, razing their data centers to the ground, and going home.

Sounds like a good start.
posted by Atom Eyes at 2:24 PM on December 15, 2017 [7 favorites]


The roomba one really bummed me out. I love my roomba. ITS MY FRIEND. Why does it neeeeeed a fucking cloud friend to overshare with?
posted by Annika Cicada at 2:32 PM on December 15, 2017 [3 favorites]


Little roomba? Why you so like to vacuum that one corner so much? Oh your little cloud friends told you that’s where the best corner of my house is?
posted by Annika Cicada at 2:34 PM on December 15, 2017 [6 favorites]


Their business model is fundamentally based on abuse and stalking. Nothing they do can ever be trusted, because their reason for being is to obtain everyone's most personal data, create profiles on them, and sell it to the highest bidder.

Really? That's their business model? I would imagine their actual business model is selling advertisements.

This solution is super counter-intuitive, but Effugas is right in his analysis.

To those that think they won't delete the images after they've verified them and hashed them; whats the upside for them in this? What would motivate them to keep this liability on their servers? "Facebook is evil" is sort of a lazy analysis to answer this question; there is pretty much no upside to keeping those images, and a ton of downsides.

Now, I'll be the first to admit they were at the very best clumsy in rolling this idea out to the public; it would have been wise of them to have a careful analysis of the technical problem posted as well as shooting down other (more intuitive sounding) solutions. A competent PR firm should have had a month or so and a team working on how to present this idea to the public.

Full disclosure: The CSO of Facebook is an acquaintance of mine. I do not posses a Facebook account.*

* Or, as a good friend of mine keeps saying when I make this claim - 'You mean you don't have control over your Facebook account'
posted by el io at 2:43 PM on December 15, 2017 [6 favorites]


I never could understand "revenge" nudes. Doesn't your former partner know exactly where they came from? How does having someone hate you beyond hate work out for these people in the end?

Works out just fine. You get to burn someone’s whole life to the ground and all you get in return is that your ex hates you? Tons of dudes think that’s a great deal.
posted by Autumnheart at 2:43 PM on December 15, 2017 [9 favorites]


"The biggest problem with having users send in hashes is that there's nothing to keep a user from sending in a hash of totally innocent pictures just to fuck with people uploading them."

Why do the manual filtering at the time people upload the hash, though? Why not wait till there's actually a collision?

Then nobody at facebook sees your image until a second person uploads it.
posted by floppyroofing at 2:49 PM on December 15, 2017 [8 favorites]


Yeah, the client-side hash would be a no-go because you could use that to stop other users from uploading literally any photo you have a copy of (including things you have no right to stop people from using).

But Facebook is already planning to pay somebody to review the photos submitted. They just need to turn it around:

1. Make local hash
2. Send Facebook hash
3. Somebody uploads photo that seems to match hash
4. Facebook reviews that photo before allowing it to be posted. If it's a politician it's allowed, and the person who submitted the hash is blocked. If it's intimate photos, the photo is blocked, and the person trying to post it is reported to the police.

This is less work for Facebook. Now they only need to review photos when somebody uploads a match instead of every possible photos people think may one day be uploaded. The only downside is that it could delay the amount of time it takes to post some valid images by whatever their backlog will introduce.
posted by willnot at 3:03 PM on December 15, 2017 [15 favorites]


So we arrive at the creation of a filter-on-a-filter.

We could even call it a...

(sunglasses, Baba O'Reilly scream)

...Metafilter
posted by chavenet at 3:06 PM on December 15, 2017 [15 favorites]


Doing the hashing locally might also mean disclosing the hash algorithm, thus making it easier to write a tool that modifies an image in a way that changes the hash with minimal visible impact?
posted by floppyroofing at 3:08 PM on December 15, 2017 [2 favorites]


1) Doesn't Facebook disallow nudes and porn uploads anyway? This program doesn't make any sense to me.

2) Perhaps the Netflix tweets were caused by an office or something streaming Netflix nonstop for customers in a waiting room?
posted by hexaflexagon at 3:09 PM on December 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


Man, I fucking hate Facebook, and that goes double for the billionaire dudebro that runs it.
posted by darkstar at 3:09 PM on December 15, 2017 [3 favorites]


Just to be safe, I'm sending nudes to my Roomba.
posted by Atom Eyes at 3:10 PM on December 15, 2017 [19 favorites]


Does your roomba care if your carpet matches the drapes?
posted by saucysault at 3:14 PM on December 15, 2017 [16 favorites]


The only realistic solution is to close one's Facebook account. This is not just my opinion, but that also belatedly of a former Facebook executive who keeps his kids "off that shit", to use his words. Cut the cord. They need us much much more than we need them, anyway.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 3:19 PM on December 15, 2017 [2 favorites]


The reality is that revenge porn is a real problem, with real fatalities.

This is a fundamental problem with FB et al and one, like content moderation, that has been around for a long time before Zuck graduated high school. Who knew that putting Slam books within arm's reach of everybody at all times would be a problem, right?
posted by rhizome at 3:21 PM on December 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


If we're at the point where the discussion is that we're not using the right method to hash our nude photos before uploading them to a faceless corporation, it's time perhaps to rethink some basic premises at the heart of a society that has more or less allowed advertising companies like Facebook, Google, etc. to do as they please.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 3:24 PM on December 15, 2017 [17 favorites]


> I would imagine their actual business model is selling advertisements.

Like I said, abuse and stalking...
posted by I-Write-Essays at 3:30 PM on December 15, 2017 [2 favorites]


Coming in a little late to this, but it reminds me of the brief period of time I was "invited" to be a "moderator" for OKCupid.

The premise is they approached people who had been actively using the site for a while, who were (presumably) in good standing with no warnings or anything, and asked them to help moderate the queue of images and profiles being reported. This means you go to a page with 5 - 10 images which have been flagged, then moderators vote on them using OKC's rules system (this amusingly created a tiny little sub-vocabulary of acronyms for mods-on-the-go who couldn't be bothered to type out Not The User or Do Not Remove every time), creating an aggregate of votes and presumably, somewhere along the line, teaching some form of algorithm what to look for.

In reality this often means you get to see a bunch of strangers' dicks and other nudes, complete with a link to their profile -- I know that usually people's OKC profiles don't contain that much personal info, but they often do contain images of people's faces and so on which can easily be reverse google searched back to their Facebook/professional pages. I always found it kind of skeevy and in light of this discussion even more so.
posted by fight or flight at 3:36 PM on December 15, 2017 [3 favorites]


Something like Amazon Key would make sense for dwellings with two front doors: an outer one, which it can unlock, and an inner one which it cannot. The outer one would keep out package thieves, and if a delivery contractor went rogue, there is limited damage that they could do. Or in apartment buildings which have a numerical PIN/contactless fob-based entry system, retrofitting these systems to authenticate with an app on the delivery worker's phone could also work.

But yes, I would not install something like that that gives access to my entire flat.
posted by acb at 3:43 PM on December 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


The roomba one really bummed me out. I love my roomba. ITS MY FRIEND. Why does it neeeeeed a fucking cloud friend to overshare with?

I just got back from a round of interviews in the bay area, to find my Roomba trapped in a corner and out of juice. The thing is incredibly dumb, getting trapped under my recliner sofa regularly, and just kinda bounces around the apartment randomly. If roomba wants to sell floorplans, their product should probably be the first customer.
posted by pwnguin at 3:51 PM on December 15, 2017 [3 favorites]


* Or, as a good friend of mine keeps saying when I make this claim - 'You mean you don't have control over your Facebook account'

Y’all. YALL. YAAAAALLLLL.

Holy fuck what.
posted by Annika Cicada at 3:52 PM on December 15, 2017


Oh wait the friend who says that isn’t said mentioned CSO never mind move along sorry.
posted by Annika Cicada at 3:54 PM on December 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


I think the holy fuck stands. We have recently learned (or possibly, *I* have recently learned) that facebook keeps a kind of negative space profile of you made up of all the people who have you in their contacts. So presumably there are nodes in this network for people who exist but don't have facebook pages, and those nodes affect the shape of the network.
posted by Horkus at 4:02 PM on December 15, 2017 [5 favorites]


'You mean you don't have control over your Facebook account'

You make it sound like it's better to have one than not, but that doesn't imply that people who think they have control of [the visible portion of] their facebook account have any more control over the invisible representation of "you" it stands on. You get to control the cosmetics, but you're just adding another information stream into your spot in the database [with the added credibility of having come from you].
posted by ctmf at 4:24 PM on December 15, 2017


Facebook can go die in a ditch, preferably yesterday. What gets me is people always tell me they only use it for photo sharing, so they don't care about the privacy violations. Yeah, it's not you who's doing the using.

For most of the year my phone has been on Android, specifically Lineage OS, but without Google services (location services are broken, I have to update my apps manually through yalp store). However, I can't wait for my new smartphone device, which, with any luck will let me run GNU/Linux all the damn time. Helpfully, this will also mean no more proprietary, not libre and data-collecting messaging apps. It's not perfect but it's a big improvement.

So long, privacy violators.
posted by Juso No Thankyou at 5:25 PM on December 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


That Netflix tweet did not amuse me. Jesus Christ, dude. The likeliest thing is that it was on in the background somewhere, maybe at a business, for seasonal background noise. Or that maybe a kid watched it; kids have to watch everything over and over.

Isn't the likeliest thing that the social media team doesn't have that data and they made a joke?
posted by ODiV at 7:19 PM on December 15, 2017 [2 favorites]


If there is fancy enough image recognition for cars to drive themselves (or even get close) or for facial recognition to work on your phone, there is fancy enough image recognition to identify nudes

So I take it that would include Michaelangelo's David? There's a lot of classical art that could get caught up in that system. Are you going to upload the Louvre's art collection as exceptions?
posted by happyroach at 7:36 PM on December 15, 2017


That's certainly a better, more respectful option. You can also appeal rulings to get someone to look and identify works with paint textures.
posted by dame at 7:54 PM on December 15, 2017


To those that think they won't delete the images after they've verified them and hashed them; whats the upside for them in this? What would motivate them to keep this liability on their servers?

stupidity? laziness? carelessness? simply not giving a fuck? i mean, what was the upside in equifax not updating its security after it knew the risk?

the entire distrust of corps like fbook and such shouldnt be based on the notion that they're evil, but rather that they're wilfully recklessly negligent with our data because they get paid and if shit goes wrong, well, that's what E&O insurance is for.
posted by wibari at 9:12 PM on December 15, 2017 [6 favorites]


Isn't the likeliest thing that the social media team doesn't have that data and they made a joke?
Nope.
posted by sockermom at 9:20 PM on December 15, 2017 [2 favorites]


The FaceBook fails at nude detection if the nudity is in a video . (backside of naked male "streaking") Reporting such also goes no where. Needles and drugs (Selfie of vial of prescribed drug in front of mirror) don't seem to register as something they care about - same with threats of violence (show up here at 1 pm so I can beat you up and lets participate in a national day of violence on a page with pictures of marijuana in a state where it is not legal).

they're wilfully recklessly negligent with our data because they get paid and if shit goes wrong, well, that's what E&O insurance is for.

And if things "go wrong" and your data is not part of a USA carve out for data like HIPPA good luck on a Court seeing you've been harmed.

Those in America who don't know - The GDRP Some places are trying to solve the problem.
posted by rough ashlar at 12:50 AM on December 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


I very much want a Google Clip; aside from the possibility of an exploit it seems very well done and considered to actually preserve privacy while enabling a cool feature. Weirdly a google search for the device results in a hit that claims it it out of stock on their retail page but following the link results in a site that doesn't even mention the device. I wonder if they've been discontinued or just aren't available in my region.

acb: "Something like Amazon Key would make sense for dwellings with two front doors: an outer one, which it can unlock, and an inner one which it cannot."

Or just an access controlled deck box on the porch/next to the door. I would use the heck out of this feature if I was a regular Amazon user.
posted by Mitheral at 5:02 AM on December 16, 2017


"This is a terrible idea, but it's incredible how basic their proposal is. There's no special tooling, they request you to just send it via Messenger, then FB looks in your messenger (which of course they can do but Jesus) and some other shit happens on Facebook's end, who knows what security there is there, with regards to how the files are moved around and cleaned up. Then you're supposed to clean up your own copy after they're done?!"

I feel like people may be missing that this is a pilot program? It's available in one country (Australia). I can't figure out from any of the reporting whether it's actually open to the general public or whether it's the kind of thing that's only in testing with a small number of users who went through some application process. (I'm guessing the latter.)
posted by floppyroofing at 5:41 AM on December 16, 2017


As a former iRobot engineer, I do feel the need to clarify a bit on the roomba one. It's unfortunate that they didn't show any of the response from the company, but No, iRobot is not selling maps of your house.

The cloud connectivity bit and opt-in map sharing is so the robot can do things like send a report of where it cleaned to you when its done. Future plans that the company have discussed publicly include things like being able to save that map between runs, and label the rooms, so that you can eventually do something like say: "Alexa, tell roomba to vacuum my bedroom" and it will be able to do that!

As far as what is on the maps...even though the system uses a camera for navigation, the actual map sent is just an "occupancy grid" of where obstacles / walls / etc. are. All the camera data is processed locally on a separate module from the rest of the robot / part that is connected to the network, and they communicate over a low-bandwidth connection. Basically you couldn't get raw image data off there even if you wanted to!

Sorry if this seems like I'm pulling an "iRobot-blue". Like I said no longer work there or have any stock. I just know a lot of really nice, smart people there, who were all very aware of privacy concerns, and know that the interest has always been in building cool, useful robots, not in becoming an ad company, or selling user data.
posted by Greasy Eyed Gristle Man at 9:24 AM on December 16, 2017 [4 favorites]


36 when we count the utm in the FPP URL?

LOLWUT
posted by petebest at 11:28 AM on December 16, 2017


The most at-risk people for this kind of harassment are already extremely marginalized. The way they've tackled this problem shows almost no understanding of the reality of this kind of situation for those who suffer it.

Tell us more. This comes from people I am completely sure have spoken directly to grieving families. What have the families of dead teenagers told you?
posted by effugas at 5:51 PM on December 16, 2017


odinsdream,

You don't have to recount your friend's harassment, but would you mind asking them what they think? They've either experienced, or might very well experience this sort of harassment. They're in the firing line. Would they want this to be an option -- sending Facebook photos privately, such that they could never be posted publicly?
posted by effugas at 6:44 PM on December 16, 2017


The cloud connectivity bit and opt-in map sharing is so the robot can do things like send a report of where it cleaned to you when its done

/usr/bin/mail is 100kB.
posted by rhizome at 6:57 PM on December 16, 2017




poffin boffin: "in order to protect your credit card and social security numbers from fraud you should send them to me so i can make sure no one else has them"

Inevitably, Simpsons got there first.
posted by Chrysostom at 10:32 AM on December 18, 2017


How Facebook Outs Sex Workers
posted by jeffburdges at 5:20 AM on January 2, 2018


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