I suggest everyone to carefully read the replies of the Facebook employees in this thread.
These data are being released in hopes of furthering the developments of these techniques - which ultimately benefits a future use by Facebook.
In turn, people like "presenti" have pointed out several times that the data were collected in Facebook offices or other places where all participants consent. The implication is clear: While the present data are legal, they would not be if shot in the "wild".
In many jurisdictions, there is no legal use case for these methods. It is literally not possible to have a widely-used implementation of these glasses that would not violate the privacy rights of "bystanders".
Of course, Facebook will work hard to make it legal, on all fronts. Whether laws need to be changed or, as pointed out by presenti, some innovation may arise to make you at least an anonymous blob, separate from name and address. And if you do not have an account - see in this thread - what is there to worry about?
Well, even if the association would only be indirect, any data collected from you (with increasing sophistication) would be part of Facebook and its models. Even as a group of anonymous users, you would become less and less anonymous and increasingly more explainable.
If you are so far unconvinced that this matters, please be also aware that the only thing standing between businesses and the extraction of the entire surplus (or consumer welfare) is asymmetry of information.
As soon as your needs and wants are sufficiently modeled, companies will use these data to maximize the profit from all their interactions with you. You will, in a sense, pay monopoly prices without facing monopolies.
Again, read the replies carefully. See how legal constraints are certainly something that is "to be solved in the future". However, whether you should ever be afforded privacy or anonymity in the face of facebook's algorithm is implicitly answered, with (frankly) a worrying amount of arrogance and dismissal: no, you and everything about you should no longer be any unexplained variation for facebook. One way or another, facebook plans to uncover you, and there is no negotiating this point.
You must now realize that Facebook is not interested in your name and birthdate, they are interested in being able to predict everything about you without these personal data. Faeebook wants a model, one that is fundamentally opposed to your welfare. And this objective will be realized.
Take heed of this, better now than later.
I’ve been hanging around HN for quite nearly a decade. This is the first comment I’ve felt compelled to mark as Favorite. Precision perception and behavior modification at scale is a dream of autocrats and marketers alike. The fact that it is private/anonymous is entirely irrelevant.
I don't think humans are smart enough to avoid this fate. The future will be exactly like the dystopian movies we are watching because that's what the megacorps want.
It's pretty simple to see, but a lot of people don't want to see it.
These data are being released in hopes of furthering the developments of these techniques - which ultimately benefits a future use by Facebook.
In turn, people like "presenti" have pointed out several times that the data were collected in Facebook offices or other places where all participants consent. The implication is clear: While the present data are legal, they would not be if shot in the "wild".
In many jurisdictions, there is no legal use case for these methods. It is literally not possible to have a widely-used implementation of these glasses that would not violate the privacy rights of "bystanders".
Of course, Facebook will work hard to make it legal, on all fronts. Whether laws need to be changed or, as pointed out by presenti, some innovation may arise to make you at least an anonymous blob, separate from name and address. And if you do not have an account - see in this thread - what is there to worry about? Well, even if the association would only be indirect, any data collected from you (with increasing sophistication) would be part of Facebook and its models. Even as a group of anonymous users, you would become less and less anonymous and increasingly more explainable.
If you are so far unconvinced that this matters, please be also aware that the only thing standing between businesses and the extraction of the entire surplus (or consumer welfare) is asymmetry of information. As soon as your needs and wants are sufficiently modeled, companies will use these data to maximize the profit from all their interactions with you. You will, in a sense, pay monopoly prices without facing monopolies.
Again, read the replies carefully. See how legal constraints are certainly something that is "to be solved in the future". However, whether you should ever be afforded privacy or anonymity in the face of facebook's algorithm is implicitly answered, with (frankly) a worrying amount of arrogance and dismissal: no, you and everything about you should no longer be any unexplained variation for facebook. One way or another, facebook plans to uncover you, and there is no negotiating this point.
You must now realize that Facebook is not interested in your name and birthdate, they are interested in being able to predict everything about you without these personal data. Faeebook wants a model, one that is fundamentally opposed to your welfare. And this objective will be realized. Take heed of this, better now than later.