#10yearchallenge was meant to steal your data ?

10 Year challenge which once flooded our Facebook and Instagram feed with 10 year old pictures are now again in Headlines. As per reports published by Wired , the huge amount of data is speculated to be used to train the facial recognition algorithms. Now let’s try to understand how the unauthorized can be used …

• What’s the story?

Just a few days back our Facebook and Instagram feed was full of collage of recent and 10 year old photos. This trend  not only hit the normal people but celebrities too. Millions of people started posting their new and old photographs using #10yearchallenge. But later concerns were raised on the motive of this trend and founder of Tech consultancy firm , KO Insights’ , Kate O’Neil raised her theory in a Wired editorial and later several news agencies started covering this thread. According to her concern , the humongous data posted by users unknowingly, can be used to train the face recognition algorithms (artificial intelligence).

Me 10 years ago: probably would have played along with the profile picture aging meme going around on Facebook and Instagram
Me now: ponders how all this data could be mined to train facial recognition algorithms on age progression and age recognition

— Kate O'Neill (@kateo) January 12, 2019

Facebook uses face recognition technology to provide us better platform experience and also harvest our data to help brands convert their advertisements into sales. Most of us have experienced that while uploading group photos Facebook automatically identifies people in it and tags them which definitely help us to save time from tagging those individual manually, well this is something which is done using face recognition technology. Facebook is spending a huge chunk of its resources to improve this technology. Now as millions of people have posted their old and new photos together , the Facebook face recognition system might use its Artificial intelligence to mine the huge chunk of data to train its algorithm so that they can predict the facial changes due to ageing.

• What’s Next? 

If the speculations are to be believed then Facebook can now predict more correctly how a user might look after 10 years from now? Wondering how this will help Facebook? Well suppose a person is losing hair so after 10 years from now he might get partial baldness . But if the person is continuously engaged with hair care product ads , chances of him purchasing those products is much higher than anyone else and that’s where Facebook makes money. Though there is no proof of this theory it cannot be neglected either as how the trend started still remains a mystery…Comment below and let us know what do you think about this?