Is Facebook’s 10-Year Challenge Feeding Facial Recognition Software?
If you’ve logged on to just about any social media platform within the past week or two, you’ve likely come across the “#10YearChallenge,” encouraging you to juxtapose a picture of yourself from 10 years ago with a current photo today. And while these memes may seem like harmless ways of engaging with friends and reminiscing over the past decade, tech journalist Kate O’Neill has raised a rather prescient point – should we be concerned that Facebook may be using us to train its facial recognition software?
No way! The vast majority of those photos are already uploaded to FB and Instagram, so if they wanted to do that, they already would have. Stop spreading conspiracies!
That’s been the common riposte from those who don’t want to entertain the possibility. And it’s a valid point – we’ve already given so much of our personal information to social media platforms that they absolutely have a large enough data set to train a facial recognition algorithm to a pretty high degree of confidence.
But O’Neill, a tech consultant who has penned several books on the intersection of modern technology and the human experience, poses some valid concerns with the 10-year challenge. (And sorry, why are we calling it a challenge? Is it really that difficult to post two selfies?)
O’Neill points to the fact that there is quite a bit of ambiguity and inaccuracy that would occur if you asked a bot to sift through Facebook photos the average user uploads over the course of a decade.
Some of us upload screenshots, scan offline photographs, or post the same photo several times over the course of a few years – these would all contribute to convoluted data, confusing an algorithm that wouldn’t be able to distinguish whether a photo matches the date it was posted or not. Not to mention the various illustrations, designs, cartoons, and other memes people upload as their profile pictures.
With the 10-year challenge on the other hand, users help the algorithm eliminate that ambiguity by giving it succinct, definitive comparisons that can be quickly collated using the hashtag (#10yearchallenge). And feeding it side-by-side photos of the same person having aged a fixed number of years, would allow it to recognize patterns in the way humans age.
But what about the trolls who post inaccurate photos of themselves in the meme – you know, like those funny or ironic posts?
Yes, this is inevitable, but O’Neill says this typically happens later on, after the meme has picked up steam and gone viral. One way to control for this is to create your data set from early adopters of the meme; those who post earlier are likely posting accurate photos that follow the meme’s directive – then comes the satire.
But what’s wrong with facial recognition software? Isn’t it useful for certain things like tracking down criminals and finding missing people? Yes, but it also comes with some pretty invasive pitfalls.
O’Neill says the use of this software could someday factor into things like health assessments for insurance companies. Does it look like you’re ageing quicker than average? You must not be taking care of yourself and leading a healthy lifestyle – up goes your premium, or worse, your insurance provider could drop you.
In terms of giving law enforcement and government surveillance apparatuses access to this technology, we need only look to any dystopian sci-fi theme that explores the intrusiveness of a ubiquitous facial recognition software in future societies.
And let’s not give Facebook or others the benefit of the doubt when it comes to selling your data. Remember the Cambridge Analytica scandal where 70 million profiles were harvested form unsuspecting users, all while Facebook basically knew about it? Or what about all those backdoors it provided to the NSA and other government surveillance programs Edward Snowden elucidated for us? Yeah, their track record on maintaining your privacy isn’t the greatest.
Is it possible that the 10-year challenge is just an organic trend that occurred spontaneously and this is all baseless paranoia? Quite possibly.
But based on the extensive data mining practices of Facebook and other social media platforms in the past, their use of a seemingly organic meme as a quick tool to feed software that benefits corporations and government surveillance alike, doesn’t seem that outlandish.
The takeaway? Maybe we should be more aware of these intrusive practices going into the future and demand certain boundaries regarding our privacy. Should you be afraid to take more selfies moving forward? Probably not. But maybe let’s have a little more discretion and skepticism toward potential social engineering experiments and our cavalier attitude when it comes to sharing personal data online.
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Black Knight 13,000-Year-Old Satellite Mystery Decoded?
Space debris or a 13,000-year-old satellite? A mysterious object, dubbed the Black Knight, orbits the Earth, puzzling scientists of the past and present. Some, like inventor and scientist Nicola Tesla, claim to have received radio signals from the orbiting figure. Astronaut Gordon Cooper was adamant that, in 1963, he saw it from his own spacecraft. The documented history of the existence of the Black Knight continues to mystify scientists.
Nicola Tesla and the Black Knight
Although Nicola Tesla’s inventions changed the way people live today, back in 1899 his peers viewed him as eccentric and somewhat of a mad scientist. When he built a laboratory and a 210-foot tower in Colorado Springs in order to experiment with electricity and record electromagnetic disturbances, his colleagues did not take him seriously. When he reported that he had received signals from extraterrestrials, the newspapers of the day mocked him.
Despite the ridicule of his peers, Tesla was excited about the signals he received, and came to fervently believe that he “had been the first to hear the greeting of one planet to another. A purpose was behind these electrical signals.” Researchers now believe the signals Tesla received likely came from the Black Knight.
Modern History of the Black Knight
Although there were some reports in the 1930s of astronomers around the world receiving strange radio signals, in 1954, the St. Louis Dispatch ran an article titled, “Artificial Satellites Are Circling Earth, Writer on ‘Saucers’ says.” The referenced writer was Donald E. Keyhoe who wrote about unidentified satellites orbiting the Earth. He claimed the government knew about them and was trying to discover their source.
Keyhoe later wrote a book, “Aliens in Space: The Real Story of Unidentified Flying Objects,” where he documented his knowledge of UFOs including what he knew about the Black Knight. Gaia’s Deep Space series discusses some of his work.
Scientists and astronomers reported seeing the satellite as it orbited the Earth. In 1953, a professor at the University of New Mexico saw a “blip of unknown origin.” In 1957, Dr. Luis Corralos, with the Communications Ministry in Venezuela, was taking pictures of the Russian satellite, Sputnik II, as it passed over Caracas. The Black Knight showed up in his photographs. This was the first known actual picture of the object.
In 1960, an American satellite showed the object following Sputnik 1, which was still orbiting the Earth. The UFO was in a polar orbit. At that time, neither the U.S. nor the Russians were capable of putting a satellite in that type of orbit. The object also appeared to be much larger and heavier than anything either country could launch.
In the 1960s, TIME magazine, as well as other news publications, reported on the Black Knight and referred to it as possibly having an extraterrestrial origin. Some North American Ham operators had detected signals coming from the object. Some even reported receiving coded messages. On September 3, 1960, the Black Knight showed up on radar for the first time. People on the ground viewing it with the naked eye could see it for about two weeks. The government reportedly established a committee to investigate the object, but no report was ever made public.
In 1963, Astronaut Gordon Cooper was orbiting the Earth when he said he saw a “glowing green light” ahead of his space capsule. At the same time, a tracking station in Australia, over which the spacecraft was orbiting at the time, reported seeing the object on radar. The evening news reported on Cooper’s sighting, and for the first time, the object was referred to as the Black Knight Satellite. The name stuck, but Cooper’s report did not.
NASA soon debunked Cooper’s UFO sighting, claiming there had been a malfunction in the space capsule which caused gases to emit what appeared glowing light. The result, said NASA, was that Cooper had a hallucination and did not see a UFO. Cooper later confirmed that he had definitely seen a UFO on his 1963 space orbit and that NASA had prohibited him from discussing it. Until his death in 2004, Cooper claimed that he did not have a hallucination in the spacecraft, but saw a UFO. He was very vocal during his lifetime about his belief in the existence of extraterrestrial life and his frustration that the U.S. government continued to cover up evidence of alien contacts.
In 1998, astronauts on the space shuttle Endeavor, on their way to the International Space Station (ISS), took photographs of the object. NASA again disagreed with the astronauts and claimed what they saw and photographed was not a UFO, but instead, just space debris, most likely a thermal blanket.
Black Knight Communications with Human Beings
Influential people and highly respected authors, movie producers, and directors and members of secret societies have claimed to receive communications from alien beings including signals from the Black Knight. Gene Roddenberry, the creator of the Star Trek television series and movies, is almost a household name. In 1973 to 1974 he was reportedly associated with a secret society called “The Council of Nine.” The Nine, in brief, were a group of prominent people who believed that the channeled messages received by their leaders were actually messages sent by extraterrestrials. Roddenberry allegedly based his Star Trek episodes on what he learned from the Nine, including the giveaway title he chose for a post Star Trek series called, “Deep Space Nine.” Many believed the source of the channeled messages was the Black Knight.
Author Philip K. Dick claimed to have communications with alien beings. The way he described his first encounter with the being in February 1974 is consistent with some of the captured coded messages from the Black Knight. Dick’s VALIS trilogy was, according to those who knew him or researched him, really a fictionalized autobiography and not science fiction. It pulled from his communications with an alien entity, which were likely from the Black Knight.
Is the Black Knight still with us?
Two separate people in different parts of the country who were each photographing the Blue Moon on July 31, 2015, captured what they believe is the Black Knight. The object was once again passing by the ISS. Is the Black Knight an ancient alien vessel? Could it be a satellite from somewhere in deep space that is trying to communicate with humans on earth? Or, is simply a piece of space debris left behind by spacecraft made by Earthlings? You decide.
Want more like this article?
Don’t miss Deep Space on Gaia for more on the long and hidden history of Earth’s secret space program.
