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Comment by jjbinx007 | Hacker News Reader

Even if this was true, which I doubt, what would Facebook actually gain by doing this? They'd see a person's face from an unflattering angle with an unflattering expression.

Or they'd see whatever the front camera sees at the time, which in my case right now is the back of my phone case or possibly the floor.

I don't see that as valuable data to mine.

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They'd be able to track what your eyes focused on and for how long, whether you wore glasses, were bald, your approximate age and ethnicity, whether you have facial hair, your reactions to content, and a lot of other behaviors and metrics that would never cross your mind.

Instagram already does all of the above, but so does a lot of digital signage in shopping districts, in addition to tracking your BT HWID, to monitor trends in real time. Then they sell this info to eg- financial companies that operate things like mutual funds.

That's what I was doing with mine in the mid-2000s, anyway.

> your reactions to content

do you actually "react" to content? Like chuckle or make any other facial expressions? I just scroll and scroll and scroll with a neutral expression.

Yes. Have you ever used one of those face swap filters that turns you into a funny character that mimics your facial expressions?

Well, how does it know?

A mirth-filled squint of the eyes, dilation of pupils at something unexpected, a tightening of the mouth signalling ennui, the movements that accompany a brief nasal exhalation at something on the nose to your taste in humor... all add to something.

You're not as implacable as you think.

You think instagram needs to spy on you to get a picture of your face? Because the 1000s of photos you already uploaded aren't enough?

You're selecting the wrong authority here. That's exactly how Instagram's algorithm works, whether or not you or I think it.

In general, "you're not being paranoid enough" is a true statement.

Really? One of the largest facial recognition databases in the world has nothing to gain from pictures of people's faces?

I really don't know how people can continue to actively use their services, especially with an OS native app.

For a fun demo of what they can do, check this out:

https://github.com/noahlevenson/stealing-ur-feelings

That conspiracy theory assumes people are mugging for their news feed, which no one does.

One very useful thing would be running facial recognition on all the faces the camera incidentally sees, in order to infer new connections between people.

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