Twitter Thread Will Make You See Why Facebook's 10 Year Challenge Meme Isn't Harmless

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mattstaff
Jan 16, 2019 7:00 PM EST

Author, Kate O'Neill used her platform on Twitter to encourage people participating in online activities like the recent, trending profile picture aging meme on Facebook, to slow down and think about it critically. O'Neill asks people to consider how willingly posting that information online for Facebook's seemingly sentient algorithm to digest, can have a ripple effect on society as a whole; how that information can be fed into worldwide databases, sold off to advertising agencies, and used to exploit the very people that upload it, without considering the impacts, in the process. She doesn't aim to inspire panic in this Twitter thread, but instead, she wants us to think critically when considering the fast-changing landscape of the world around us. Some solid advice! 

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    Text - 11:14 Thread Kate O'Neill @kateo Me 10 years ago: probably would have played along with the profile picture aging meme going around on Facebook and Instagram Me now: ponders how all this data could be mined to train facial recognition algorithms on age progression and age recognition 5:25 AM 13/1/19 Twitter Web Client 5,303 Retweets 14.1K Likes Kate O'Neill @kateo 2d Replying to @kateo Most common rebuttal in my mentions: "That data is already available. Facebook's already got all the pro
    via samrye
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    Text - 11:14 @kateo 2d Kate O'Neill Replying to @kateo Most common rebuttal in my mentions: "That data is already available. Facebook's already got all the profile pictures." Of course. And I'm not trying to say this is a crisis or that it's inherently dangerous. But just for fun, let's play this out. L.45 10 414 @kateo 2d Let's just imagine that you wanted to, say, train a facial recognition algorithm on age-related characteristics. You'd ideally want a broad and rigorous data set with lots of
    via samrye
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    Text - 11:14 taken L.42 329 Kate O'Neill @kateo 2d Why? People could have scanned offline photos. People might have uploaded pictures multiple times over years. Some platforms strip EXIF data for privacy; people's captions are helpfully adding that context back, as well as other context about where and how the pic was taken .33 2 249 @kateo 2d Thanks to this meme, there's now a very large data set of carefully curated photos of people from 10 years ago and now. Is Kate O'Neill it bad that someon
    via samrye
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    Text - 11:14 fraught consequences: it could someday factor into insurance assessment and healthcare. 53 326 Kate O'Neill @kateo. 2d I'm not saying anyone should panic or feel bad. It's simply worth becoming more mindful of how our data can be used. We don't need to be wary of everything; we just need to think critically, and learn more about the potential our data has at scale. We're all still learning. 10 t100 580 Kate O'Neill @kateo 2d Finally, if you're fascinated with this topic, you would p
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