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.
About the Author
What is the Cabal and How Dark Forces Control the Masses
If there are dark forces, or a cabal, that control world economies (and minds), as well as secret factions within religious organizations, then a lot of strange things begin to make sense.
Many believe some covert but influential organization is responsible for globally impactful circumstances or events. And the truth is that people conspire — they gather in small groups and work together to take control. Such meetings have been going on since the beginning of our species. But when the actions of secret societies become sinister and harmful to others, then perhaps it’s time for the populace to wake up.
Sometimes called the Illuminati, the New World Order or even the Global Elite, “cabal” refers to secret factions working inside our governments with an agenda for world domination. To become aware of their entrainment, we must empower ourselves with an awareness free from their crafted agendas.
As conscious beings who can see what is happening in the world around us, we are in place to call out and disempower their secrecy. And the best news buttercup, they don’t win! There is nothing to fear.
The truth will be our greatest boon. Cosmic order will prevail and we will achieve the ascension that has been 25,000 years in the making.
The Cabal and Secret Societies
Secrecy needs darkness to survive. We may have heard the name, but what is the Cabal? If we’re unaware of their existence, we are powerless against their manipulation.
Secret societies are nothing new. From the Illuminati to the Freemasons, they have thrived behind closed doors, teaching countless generations’ beliefs and knowledge. Secrecy and power are their currency. Like the Hydra, they have many heads, many names, all with the same belief that power and domination is the role of the select few.
The Bilderberg Group
More than a half-century ago, in 1954, Daniel Estulin wrote, “the most powerful men in the world met for the first time in Oosterbeek, Netherlands,” to debate the future of the world. From that day forward, right up to the present, they have been meeting every year in secret. They called themselves the Bilderberg Group, which has a membership of world-power elites, mostly from America, Canada, and Western Europe.
These are mostly high-profile individuals who are influential in an array of areas ranging from politics to entertainment, and from industry to banking. Well represented are top figures from the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), IMF, World Bank, Trilateral Commission, EU, and powerful central bankers from the Federal Reserve, the ECB, and Bank of England.
The official Bilderberg website notes that discussions are held under the Chatham House Rule. This refers to the fact that participants can use any information they receive during the meeting, but are sworn not to reveal its source. The last meeting took place in the spring of 2019 at the Hotel Montreux Palace in the Swiss town of Montreux.
The Bilderberg Group’s highly secretive meetings, without a fixed agenda, according to The Local, a Stockholm-based news outlet, act as “regular fodder for conspiracy theorists who believe its participants act as a secret world government…However, organizers argue the private nature of the event gives attendees the chance to hold informal discussions about major issues.”
