
Facebook sorry over face tagging launch - colinprince
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13693791
======
saturdaysaint
"Sorry" is pretty fascile when it's clear that their default philosophy is
"Ask for forgiveness, not permission".

Of course, the incentives are so high for Facebook that it's hard to imagine
this happening any other way. This fully leverages both of their most valuable
assets - the most comprehensive social graph and the biggest collection of
tagged photographs.

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jfruh
"We're sorry, not in the sense that we're going to undo this feature or make
it opt in or actually change our behavior in the future, but in the sense that
we aren't entirely pleased that people are whining about us in the media for a
news cycle or two again."

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wccrawford
"The social network said that it should have done more to notify members about
the global launch."

NOOOOO. They just don't get it. It isn't about notification. It's about
violating my privacy without asking permission first.

You can roll out any feature you want silently, so long as it is turned off by
default!

~~~
pflats
Of course they get it. They just don't care.

If this was opt-in by default, it wouldn't get nearly the same adoption. Lots
of people would click no, then never change the setting.

The general public will eventually get over it, the same way they got over
{the news feed, suggest a friend, changing interests to likes, letting people
without .edu accounts sign up, ...}. Facebook knows this. PR probably had the
apology written before the feature was turned on.

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bad_user
Until Facebook adds the possibility to prevent people from tagging me
completely, then I don't believe they are sorry.

However, such an option is not available ... you have to untag yourself after
the fact and some people just keep re-adding you ... how do you explain to
people to fucking stop tagging you without hurting their feelings and without
sounding like a weirdo?

I loved Facebook in the beginning, but their intrusion on my privacy is
getting too damn annoying. I wish there was an alternative.

~~~
ryusage
Tagging is a pretty fundamental feature of Facebook, in my opinion. That being
said, there actually already is an option in the privacy settings to prevent
anyone from seeing the images you're tagged in. That's slightly different from
preventing the tagging in the first place, but the effect is the same.

~~~
bad_user
No it's not - I want people to see pictures of myself that I'm tagging myself.

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nodata
No they're not.

If you're sorry, you don't do it again.

Facebook do this again and again and again and again.

~~~
Lewisham
Always better to ask forgiveness than permission, no?

~~~
infinite_snoop
The people who trot this line out too much tend to be assholes in my
experience.

~~~
Lewisham
Perhaps I shouldn't have omitted the sarcasm tag?

~~~
mentat
Probably not since I too have encountered people who use this as an excuse for
anything.

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ed209
Why does FB always have to be opt-out.

what I actually feared was being tagged in any photo - even not taken by my
friends. Although it would be cool to find photos of myself by other people to
try an piece my various evenings out back together ;)

~~~
smackfu
Why opt-out? Because the apathetic 95% of the userbase will never opt-in.

What Facebook should do better is intelligently set defaults. Defaulting On
for everyone is stupid. Defaulting On for people who already have privacy
settings that indicate they would be ok with it is much better.

~~~
Splines
I don't mind opt-out, as long as I _know_ it's opt-out.

The way FB rolls features out is they do it silently in the background, which
is sort of grating. I wouldn't mind at all if there was a one-time "Hey, we
made this cool new thing, I'm going to turn it on now, but I'm giving you a
chance of not using it if you want" message on my next login.

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codeup
Do you know why FB isn't asking for permission? Because it can get away with
this patronizing _and_ self serving behavior.

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invisible
How would Facebook be able to innovate if everything they released was opt-
out? This isn't some privacy-leaking piece of the site, it is a feature that
helps one of their core components be better.

If you are that much of a privacy freak, don't make a Facebook account. It's
that simple - either you want your data out there to some degree or not (and
don't glorify Facebook into something that it is not).

~~~
ltamake
So every Facebook user deserves to have their privacy invaded because they
have an account on that site?

Facebook should have been clear about what the feature did, what it didn't do,
and how it used their account. They also should have sent emails out warning
users of the feature's activation.

Facebook does this all the time, but they'll get off the hook yet again just
because they're Facebook. Sigh...

~~~
invisible
How does this invade somebody's privacy? I don't get it - because it makes
detecting a friend's face possible?

~~~
ltamake
Because it shouldn't be enabled by default?

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ryusage
Am I the only one who doesn't see any big deal over this feature? Normally,
I'd be all upset about them forcing an opt-out approach, but I just don't
really see this as changing your level of privacy at all.

If it's a friend of yours, and they're uploading a picture of you, well then
what do you care if FB removes one step for them? I think most people already
tag everything anyway, don't they?

~~~
rodh
I may be wrong, but the impression I'm getting is that people are offended
that facebook have used the photos that have people tagged them in as data for
training their facial recognition software without them agreeing to it.

It's the fact that they now have the power to determine whether you're in a
photo, any photo, or even any video, anywhere in the world, that has people
worried. What might facebook end up doing with that?

Of course there was nothing stopping them doing this without it being obvious
to anyone.

~~~
ryusage
Got it. That does make sense; the article and comments just didn't really seem
like that was specifically what people were worried about. Given that I see no
other reason to care, though, I assume you're correct.

Personally, I'm not so worried about Facebook being able to recognize me. I'd
be more concerned about to whom they might give that data. I can definitely
see room for a lot of concern there.

~~~
movingahead
As someone who tags a lot of friends on facebook, I love this feature. It was
so painful to tag even 5 people over even a 20 photos album. I don't think
this is any kind of privacy violation. Moreover, desktop apps like picasa have
had brilliant image recognition abilities for a long time. The only thing I
want fb to do is to give me an option to stop being tagged by apps without
explicit permission.

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pasbesoin
You ran out of "sorry's" a while back, guys.

