As you might well know by now, Facebook is one of the lone tech companies who officially hold no stance on the pseudo-Cybersecurity/sleeper-spying bill named “CISA” recently passed by the U.S. Senate, which suggests that they are for the bill and wish not to deal with public backlash at the moment. As you may not know, however, is that Facebook has been deeply involved in the field of machine-learning and has been developing voice and facial recognition software among other things for the last handful of years. This in itself is not inherently ‘bad’; the field of machine-learning is rather interesting if one cares to look into it. However, when one considers that Facebook’s Chairman and Chief Executive of Facebook, Inc, is Mark Elliot Zuckerberg the companies research into machine-learning does start to feel somewhat… invasive, given Facebook’s track record with protecting sensitive and non-sensitive user-data. With CISA looming over the North American Internet this pervasive feeling only grows to feel legitimized. Now, onto the point of this post.

Facebook has recently announced a new feature in their ever-popular “Messenger” mobile app named “Photo Magic.” This new feature, which runs as a background task on your phone or tablet, scans every image file on your phone that it has access to to determine whether or not one of your Facebook friends is in the photo. If Photo Magic thinks it find a match, it will notify you and ask to post the image to your profile while tagging your friend. With CISA having been passed, this means all the newly collected facial recognition data has a direct pipeline to the U.S. Governments Intelligence Agencies. While this has some real-world applications such as trying to determine the geographical location of fugitive or other some-such lowlife, one needs to keep in mind Facebook’s respect to their user’s privacy or, rather, their lack-there-of. As of this moment the efficacy of Photo Magic is unknown as it is currently being tested in a live environment for the first time – the country of Australia – and it is impossible to tell if it will work properly until the data is collected and compiled. However, if Photo Magic fails to live up to Facebook’s hopes of collecting massive, reliable, data archives this does not mean the project will be abandoned: CISA being passed makes sure of this as facial recognition data is just another excuse to build profiles on the innocent, and having a direct information-pipeline to the Government only increases incentives for companies such as Facebook to have this project in a working state.

What is this sites opinion on the release of Photo Magic, how do y’all feel about it? Are you opposed or for?
-EDIT- I forgot to remove my layout for this post, sorry about that. If its possible to remove with the post editor I do not know how to remove it.

Ah, privacy... Back when that term really meant something... Feels so long ago now.

While it can be a good app, I must say it should be nerfed for me to be allowed. Scanning all images I have in my phone? No thanks. Scan only those that I want to publish in Facebook, otherwise why would you care on who appears on those images? How do you know those people have a Facebook account? How do you know they want to be tagged or have photos of them published in social media?

They are slowly crossing the limits of privacy. One more reason why I refrain from using Facebook on my mobile as much as I can. If this app really becomes available for the public, even more debates about privacy will arise.

If my suggested nerf doesn't come into effect, I'm completely against it. They have no right to scan our phones or tablets, they belong to us and we keep there whatever we want. But my true concern is how the government has allowed something like this. I've seen worse politic decisions, but this one can also be potentially used against politicians, so why allow it?

I see no real use for Photo Magic when it comes to Facebook. Stupid. If I wanted to post a picture of a friend I woud I don't need a software to go through all of my files and ask to post it. I don't trust anything of this idea at all. Just invasive to the extreme