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Meta shutting down Facebook’s facial recognition system

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.

Meta says that a third of its users previously opted-in to having their face be automatically recognized for photo tagging, totalling over one billion recognized faces. read more

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.

The new smart glasses would let you “zoom in” on and enhance the sounds you care about in a real-life situation, while dimming loud background noises that might come in the way of a clear conversation.

The research team, led by Ravish Mehra, calls this “perceptual superpowers”. The technology, for now, only exists as a prototype in-ear monitor, which is paired with an off-the-shelf eye-movement tracking device that picks up what the user takes interest in, before turning up the volume on whatever grabs their attention. read more

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.

The team is launching an audio-only mode, as well as automatic closed captions great for people with vision loss and hearing loss. It’s also giving people various ways to access a stream outside of Facebook, including logged-out support, which means people without a Facebook account can still tune into content. This accompanies Public Switched Telephone Network support, allowing streamers to generate toll-free telephone numbers so viewers can call into the audio of a live broadcast. read more

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.

The six researchers came up with a system to classify and translate memes with up to 92 per cent accuracy. Visually impaired people generally use screen readers and built-in accessibility features to help them navigate around the internet.

According to the study, social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter allow users to add alternative texts to their images but most users are not aware of the feature and simply do not use it. This has resulted in just 0.1 per cent of images being accessible for visually impaired people. Cole Gleason, a Ph.D. student at CMU’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute said that basic computer vision techniques make it possible to describe the images underlying each meme. read more

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.

The White House is working with the Social Security Administration to propose a new rule that allow for social media monitoring in order to crack down on fraud, reports the New York Times.

On Monday, the White House released a fiscal 2020 budget proposal that would allow the Social Security Administration to “use all collection tools to recover funds in certain scenarios” as well as hold fraud investigators liable for overpayments. Right-wing think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation and the Republican Party have long attacked the disability benefits program as being wasteful and rife with abuse. But the number of disability beneficiaries is actually going down due to a stronger economy. Approximately 9.2 million Americans received disability benefits in 2017. read more

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.

With a 10-inch 1280 x 800 display, Portal from Facebook improves video calling and lets you enjoy quality time with family and friends — hands and distraction free. Looking for a larger screen for more flexibility? You can also opt for a 15-inch 1920 x 1080 pivoting display with Portal+. Both models are designed to help you feel closer to the important people in your life and make video chats feel less like a call, and more like you’re actually in the same room. read more

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.

My Smart Price did a teardown of the latest Instagram APK and discovered strings that point to the automatic alt-text (AAT) feature. This clearly suggests that the accessibility feature is likely to be added in a future version of the Instagram app. read more

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.

“Oh wow my deleted Facebook Zip file contains info on every single phone cellphone call and text I made for about a year,” says Twitter user Mat Johnson. Another, Dylan McKay, says, “Somehow it has my entire call history with my partner’s mum.” Others have found a similar pattern where it appears close contacts, like family members, are the only ones tracked in Facebook’s call records. read more

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. read more

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.

Once the 30 days are up, Facebook notifies you in case you want to put them to sleep again.

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