Facebook Privacy Concerns – Labeling Posts to Help Train AI Systems

Facebook privacy concerns started recently when experts claimed that this website is stealing people’s data thus violating the privacy of the users. But, Facebook continues to be under the cloud of doubt once again, in May of 2019. It is revealed that the social network is using a special team of workers to label photos and status updates with keywords.

The reason for this is that Facebook wants to train their AI systems to do the exact same thing.

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How is it Done?

For the beginning, the workers categorize the items in five different categories. Some of these include food, selfies, animal, etc. They also take into an account the author’s intention behind every post. As Facebook says, the goal is to see how the posts on Facebook change during a certain period of time. This helps Facebook to develop new features aimed to increase usage and ad revenue.

Why is it a Concern?

Facebook clearly stated that the posts and photos are chosen in random order. Furthermore, they don’t include details of the user who posted the photo. But, the screenshots of the posts with the comments might show usernames and this is where the problem lies. Legal experts claim that this process might violate GDPR requirements if the content is posted by EU citizens.

John Kennedy, a partner at law firm Wiggin, said that one of the main purposes of GDPR is a limitation. If Facebook wants to take the posts to improve their features, they should explicitly tell that. To that, Facebook responded that they are well aware of the situation.

Another problem with this is that Cambridge Analytica, an outside company, was able to fraudulently get the data used for the Trump presidential campaign. This is where Facebook privacy concerns began. If they want new accounts to sign up, they should definitely steer clear of these issues. Source: 9to5mac

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