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FaceApp: Relax You're Just Old (Now)

FaceApp: Relax You're Just Old (Now)

Mornings With Mark no. 0193

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Bad Robot Transcript

In this episode of the show, we’re going to talk about the controversy surrounding faceapp. You know, you start young and old let’s dive into it. So you’ve probably seen both the good and the bad about face out this week. It started off early this week with the age Challenge on Instagram and Twitter where people were showing up with current face and aged out 20-30 years and the results are really really interesting.

And you know, we’ve seen Drake old with Servo salt and pepper beard and looking wiser and popular politician thrown through the filter have celebrity sharing what they might look like a down the road and it’s really fascinating and was having a good chuckle but then things took a bit of a darker turn there’s been a lot of controversy around the security and privacy of this application, but what’s really going on I’ve had the opportunity to speak to a few journalists around a few stories to help clarify some of the soreness share that in this episode of the show.

So just so you know, what face app is is a mobile app on iOS and on Android and you put in your selfie and you can then manipulate Delete how what it looks like using various filters. Now. This isn’t like Snapchat where you’re putting on silly filters or theme filters to things like that.

The idea behind face app is that you can see yourself in different scenarios. This app has been around since 2017 and over that time. They built out a number of filters. You can put on at your facial hair and glasses you can change the color of your hair and you can change your hair styles.

You can make up you do all sorts of things to see what you might look like sporting a different style in this app isn’t without controversy years ago or a year to year in a bit ago and say you’re a bit ago for a couple hours. They had an ethnicity changing filter that raced a massive massive uproar and the company immediately and over time.

They’ve actually build out a pro subscription model as well wear. If you pay for the access to the features, you can get Advanced features and apply more filters in the filters are a little more finely tuned with, you know, your image app so that you can see what you might be.

Like an under circumstances and you know barring the missteps around like a necessity. It’s kind of cool to see what color you know, what you might look like as a blonde different makeup style or that kind of stuff. It’s really just designed to be fun. But what is raised all the controversy? Well, if you thinks initially there was respond to reports and rumbling on social media that it was actually uploading a bunch more data than that people thought.

Well those have been thoroughly debunked but what was happening was that the image processing was not done locally the original user experience and up until the late this week on Thursday the App application developer me to change but I’ve been told that change it felt very much like the all the photo manipulation was being done locally.

It wasn’t it was being done in the cloud kudos to them for having a fast cloud back in to get it back to you, but it was uploading your an image without your knowledge necessarily that’s a problem. Now, they’ve added at a dialog box that warranty on first use Hey, this is going into the cloud to be processed and but why does an impact we have so many cloud services? It really shouldn’t matter should it.

Well, it does because in this case the terms of service in the privacy policy for faceapp are pretty egregious. Now, I would put them as worse than Facebook and Twitter and Facebook and Twitter pretty bad for some of the stuff but the difference is in me know you’ll see some countering arguments on social around the impact of this and but really what it says with the privacy policy in the terms of service add up to is that with the photos that you upload to the service of any photo you apply a filter to the company has unlimited rights to do whatever they want with they can sell it to they can reuse it in advertising they can use it for further training their models any number of things.

So obviously that’s beyond what most social media services in one most apps asked for but most have to get within the terms of service is essentially a license of royalty for your license so that they can actually show it to other people legally be You own the copyright around those images and they need a license in order to share them with your friends and things like that.

And I’m so having an unlimited license that allows this the developer behind face up to sell things that’s pushing things too far, especially when people weren’t really aware that their photos were actually being uploaded to the cloud and now the other challenge there is if you’re uploading additional information or if you’re not using the sharing features right within the application, there’s only metadata around your a photo that’s going up.

So it’s not necessarily Associated to your name, and I’m so it’s not a case of having a profile shot for your identity. And I’m done that would be easy enough to correlate to ask from social media and so forth. But if you do add those connectors, if you lovers of Twitter the Facebook connector within the app, they’re going to have that correlation and now you’ve given them license to use your face.

They know who you are. So you may be more likely to be used and because they can correlate it but really it’s a matter of privacy. So essentially anything that you upload it to this application is going to be public. So any photo you apply a filter to any app Public that’s the choice.

You have no control and that’s what’s really different compared to social media to normal and social media. You still have some measure of control and that’s it. Everything else behind those people freaking out and saying because it’s a rushin developer. You really should be concerned. I guarantee you if you look into the teams that have developed the apps on your phone.

There is a multitude of countries represented. So people just have a kickback or natural by us that when it comes to cyber security or privacy and Russia. I like to take things on a case-by-case basis. So yes the terms of service and the licensing in the grants and permissions of the companies get from the photos are egregious.

There is nothing as there’s no solid evidence to indicate anything more malicious than that. If you don’t have any identity data Associated fiorentino sharing connectors, they are not building this certificates identity database. We saw you ask the political parties had recommended people don’t use this because you’re helping out an enemy in order to build up his facial recognition system.

Let me tell you the reality is you’re uploading most of these photos to social media anyway, Is far more directly linked to your identity and people are harvesting and scraping social media left right and Center. So it’s not nearly as big of an issue as everybody blowing up to vote for me.

The biggest takeaway was that far too few people far too few people. Excuse me. I actually read through the terms of service actually read the to the privacy policy and I’ve only a fraction of those people understand the implications of it because this terms of service had a bunch of things that sound like fine.

Okay, great. They’re limited but then a few Clauses that basically negated those previous Clauses and gave them anything. They want to coerce the CEO of the company came out and said, hey, this is what we do with the photos and that’s great and I fully believe what his statements were which is essentially the only cash for processing for a little bit and then deleted off the servers because it cost him money to store them.

Right and if he’s not making money off of it, why would he store them? And I totally understand that but the problem is is that legally he can to companies allowed to do whatever they want with the photos. So they may not be doing something like reselling them were using them in advertising or using the stock photography or things like that.

Now they have the legal right to do that. Turn off the challenge but that key issue again comes back to reading the terms of service. I know it’s dry. I know it’s boring but we agree to so many things in this was such a cool thing to get on and see how you look older people wanted to get and I understand that but these short-term game may not be worth the reward given watching a show friendly the time, you know that I don’t think any choices necessarily bad except if it’s a choice that’s made implicitly and not explicitly and I think that’s what happened with this app that people were didn’t understand that was being processed in the cloud and the implications of that process and gave that company full rights to use that image in that photo and that you uploaded to be uploaded image of somebody else they have now have full legal rights to use that and I think that’s the problem is that people jumped into this and implicitly accepted this bargain when they weren’t aware the full implications.

That’s really the key takeaway. There’s no need to panic make the choice yourself. If you’re okay with the photo, you’re uploading public and being reused for commercial purposes. Go ahead. You can see from the thumbnail for this video. I did it myself as a sample just to see the experience.

They understood the risk. I took it on willingly and I think that’s absolutely critical. So yes, it’s boring but reads the terms of service to know what you’re getting into. What do you think? Let me know hit me up online at Mark and see a in the comments down below and has always been emailed me at Mark end.

Look forward to talking to you this have a fantastic day and we’ll see you on the next episode of the show. In this episode of the show, we’re going to talk about the controversy surrounding faceapp. You know, you start young and old let’s dive into it. So you’ve probably seen both the good and the bad about face out this week.

It started off early this week with the age Challenge on Instagram and Twitter where people were showing up with current face and aged out 20-30 years and the results are really really interesting. And you know, we’ve seen Drake old with Servo salt and pepper beard and looking wiser and popular politician thrown through the filter have celebrity sharing what they might look like a down the road and it’s really fascinating and was having a good chuckle but then things took a bit of a darker turn there’s been a lot of controversy around the security and privacy of this application, but what’s really going on I’ve had the opportunity to speak to a few journalists around a few stories to help clarify some of the soreness share that in this episode of the show.

So just so you know, what face app is is a mobile app on iOS and on Android and you put in your selfie and you can then manipulate Delete how what it looks like using various filters. Now. This isn’t like Snapchat where you’re putting on silly filters or theme filters to things like that.

The idea behind face app is that you can see yourself in different scenarios. This app has been around since 2017 and over that time. They built out a number of filters. You can put on at your facial hair and glasses you can change the color of your hair and you can change your hair styles.

You can make up you do all sorts of things to see what you might look like sporting a different style in this app isn’t without controversy years ago or a year to year in a bit ago and say you’re a bit ago for a couple hours. They had an ethnicity changing filter that raced a massive massive uproar and the company immediately and over time.

They’ve actually build out a pro subscription model as well wear. If you pay for the access to the features, you can get Advanced features and apply more filters in the filters are a little more finely tuned with, you know, your image app so that you can see what you might be.

Like an under circumstances and you know barring the missteps around like a necessity. It’s kind of cool to see what color you know, what you might look like as a blonde different makeup style or that kind of stuff. It’s really just designed to be fun. But what is raised all the controversy? Well, if you thinks initially there was respond to reports and rumbling on social media that it was actually uploading a bunch more data than that people thought.

Well those have been thoroughly debunked but what was happening was that the image processing was not done locally the original user experience and up until the late this week on Thursday the App application developer me to change but I’ve been told that change it felt very much like the all the photo manipulation was being done locally.

It wasn’t it was being done in the cloud kudos to them for having a fast cloud back in to get it back to you, but it was uploading your an image without your knowledge necessarily that’s a problem. Now, they’ve added at a dialog box that warranty on first use Hey, this is going into the cloud to be processed and but why does an impact we have so many cloud services? It really shouldn’t matter should it.

Well, it does because in this case the terms of service in the privacy policy for faceapp are pretty egregious. Now, I would put them as worse than Facebook and Twitter and Facebook and Twitter pretty bad for some of the stuff but the difference is in me know you’ll see some countering arguments on social around the impact of this and but really what it says with the privacy policy in the terms of service add up to is that with the photos that you upload to the service of any photo you apply a filter to the company has unlimited rights to do whatever they want with they can sell it to they can reuse it in advertising they can use it for further training their models any number of things.

So obviously that’s beyond what most social media services in one most apps asked for but most have to get within the terms of service is essentially a license of royalty for your license so that they can actually show it to other people legally be You own the copyright around those images and they need a license in order to share them with your friends and things like that.

And I’m so having an unlimited license that allows this the developer behind face up to sell things that’s pushing things too far, especially when people weren’t really aware that their photos were actually being uploaded to the cloud and now the other challenge there is if you’re uploading additional information or if you’re not using the sharing features right within the application, there’s only metadata around your a photo that’s going up.

So it’s not necessarily Associated to your name, and I’m so it’s not a case of having a profile shot for your identity. And I’m done that would be easy enough to correlate to ask from social media and so forth. But if you do add those connectors, if you lovers of Twitter the Facebook connector within the app, they’re going to have that correlation and now you’ve given them license to use your face.

They know who you are. So you may be more likely to be used and because they can correlate it but really it’s a matter of privacy. So essentially anything that you upload it to this application is going to be public. So any photo you apply a filter to any app Public that’s the choice.

You have no control and that’s what’s really different compared to social media to normal and social media. You still have some measure of control and that’s it. Everything else behind those people freaking out and saying because it’s a rushin developer. You really should be concerned. I guarantee you if you look into the teams that have developed the apps on your phone.

There is a multitude of countries represented. So people just have a kickback or natural by us that when it comes to cyber security or privacy and Russia. I like to take things on a case-by-case basis. So yes the terms of service and the licensing in the grants and permissions of the companies get from the photos are egregious.

There is nothing as there’s no solid evidence to indicate anything more malicious than that. If you don’t have any identity data Associated fiorentino sharing connectors, they are not building this certificates identity database. We saw you ask the political parties had recommended people don’t use this because you’re helping out an enemy in order to build up his facial recognition system.

Let me tell you the reality is you’re uploading most of these photos to social media anyway, Is far more directly linked to your identity and people are harvesting and scraping social media left right and Center. So it’s not nearly as big of an issue as everybody blowing up to vote for me.

The biggest takeaway was that far too few people far too few people. Excuse me. I actually read through the terms of service actually read the to the privacy policy and I’ve only a fraction of those people understand the implications of it because this terms of service had a bunch of things that sound like fine.

Okay, great. They’re limited but then a few Clauses that basically negated those previous Clauses and gave them anything. They want to coerce the CEO of the company came out and said, hey, this is what we do with the photos and that’s great and I fully believe what his statements were which is essentially the only cash for processing for a little bit and then deleted off the servers because it cost him money to store them.

Right and if he’s not making money off of it, why would he store them? And I totally understand that but the problem is is that legally he can to companies allowed to do whatever they want with the photos. So they may not be doing something like reselling them were using them in advertising or using the stock photography or things like that.

Now they have the legal right to do that. Turn off the challenge but that key issue again comes back to reading the terms of service. I know it’s dry. I know it’s boring but we agree to so many things in this was such a cool thing to get on and see how you look older people wanted to get and I understand that but these short-term game may not be worth the reward given watching a show friendly the time, you know that I don’t think any choices necessarily bad except if it’s a choice that’s made implicitly and not explicitly and I think that’s what happened with this app that people were didn’t understand that was being processed in the cloud and the implications of that process and gave that company full rights to use that image in that photo and that you uploaded to be uploaded image of somebody else they have now have full legal rights to use that and I think that’s the problem is that people jumped into this and implicitly accepted this bargain when they weren’t aware the full implications.

That’s really the key takeaway. There’s no need to panic make the choice yourself. If you’re okay with the photo, you’re uploading public and being reused for commercial purposes. Go ahead. You can see from the thumbnail for this video. I did it myself as a sample just to see the experience.

They understood the risk. I took it on willingly and I think that’s absolutely critical. So yes, it’s boring but reads the terms of service to know what you’re getting into. What do you think? Let me know hit me up online at Mark and see a in the comments down below and has always been emailed me at Mark end.

Look forward to talking to you this have a fantastic day and we’ll see you on the next episode of the show.

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