Meta says it will be shutting down the long-held facial recognition system on its Facebook social platform “in the coming weeks,” according to a blog post by Jerome Pesenti, vice-president of artificial intelligence at Meta. What’s more, the company will be deleting over one billion recognized faces in its database, citing societal concerns as the reason for the move and to pre-empt regulatory control after a tumultuous year for the brand.
Facebook’s Prototype Smart Glasses Could Redefine Human Hearing
Facebook’s researchers are working on a new technology developed by Facebook Reality Labs (FRL), the research unit creating ever-more sophisticated AR and VR headsets.
Facebook Launching Accessibility Tools Making Live-Streaming Available to More People
Facebook says it’s going to launch various features over the next couple weeks to make Facebook Live more accessible and easy to use, particularly for people who might not have a lot of mobile data.
Carnegie Mellon Researchers Design New Tool Making Memes Accessible for Blind and Visually Impaired People
Carnegie Mellon University researchers have come up with a method that will automatically identify memes and will apply pre-written templates to add descriptive text making them intelligible via existing assistive technologies.
US Government Plans to Monitor Your Facebook to Catch Disability Fraud
A proposed US administration rule would allow agency officials to monitor social media accounts of people that are on Social Security disability.
Facebook Unveils New Portal and Portal+ Smart Speakers
Facebook has unveiled Portal and Portal+, new smart speakers that feature video calling and Alexa built-in.
Facebook’s Automatic Alternative Text Feature Coming Soon to Instagram
Facebook originally launched the automatic alt-text feature aimed at improving accessibility of its website in 2016. The feature makes it easier for the blind and visually impaired to use Facebook by generating a description of a photo by utilizing object recognition technology and now the same accessibility feature might soon become available on Instagram.
Facebook Has Been Collecting Your Call Records and SMS Data for Years
Several Twitter users have reported finding months or years of call history data in their downloadable Facebook data file. A number of Facebook users have been spooked by the recent Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal, prompting them to download all the data that Facebook stores on their account. The results have been alarming for some.
Facebook Improves How Blind Users Can See Images
When Matt King first got on Facebook eight years ago, the blind engineer had to weigh whether it was worth spending an entire Saturday morning checking whether a friend of his was actually in his friend list. Such were the tools at the time for the visually impaired – almost nonexistent.
Today, thanks to text-to-audio software, it just takes a few seconds for him to accomplish the same task. And because of a new face recognition service the social network is rolling out, he can now learn which friends are in photos, even those who haven’t been tagged by another user.
Facebook’s Snooze Button Silences Annoying Friends for 30 Days
Facebook’s “Snooze” button allows users to mute people, Pages, and Groups for 30 days. This is beneficial if you find someone’s posts very annoying, but do not want to unfriend them for whatever reason. Snooze also allows Pages and Groups to retain less-active users that would otherwise unlike a page or leave a group.
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