Users' privacy at risk? Facebook 'labels' posts manually in India

Human-powered content labeling, also referred to as 'data annotation,' is a growth industry as companies seek to harness data for AI training and other purposes.

Business Standard : Over the past year, a team of as many as 260 contract workers in Hyderabad, India has ploughed through millions of Facebook Inc photos, status updates and other content posted since 2014.

The workers categorize items according to five "dimensions," as Facebook calls them.

These include the subject of the post - is it food, for example, or a selfie or an animal? What is the occasion - an everyday activity or major life event? And what is the author's intention - to plan an event, to inspire, to make a joke?

The work is aimed at understanding how the types of things users post on its services are changing, Facebook said. That can help the company develop new features, potentially increasing usage and ad revenue.

Details of the effort were provided by multiple employees at outsourcing firm Wipro Ltd over several months. The workers spoke on condition of anonymity due to fear of retaliation by the Indian firm. Facebook later confirmed many details of the project. Wipro declined to comment and referred all questions to Facebook.

The Wipro work is among about 200 content labeling projects that Facebook has at any time, employing thousands of people globally, company officials told Reuters.

Many projects are aimed at "training" the software that determines what appears in users' news feeds and powers the artificial intelligence underlying many other features.

The labeling efforts have not previously been reported.

"It's a core part of what you need," said Nipun Mathur, the director of product management for AI at Facebook. "I don't see the need going away."

The content labeling program could raise new privacy issues for Facebook, according to legal experts consulted by Reuters. The company is facing regulatory investigations worldwide over an unrelated set of alleged privacy abuses involving the sharing of user data with business partners.

The Wipro workers said they gain a window into lives as they view a vacation photo or a post memorializing a deceased family member. Facebook acknowledged that some posts, including screenshots and those with comments, may include user names.

Addicted to Facebook, Twitter? Here's what a new study has to say

Questions on the survey asked about users' preoccupation with the platform, their feelings when unable to use it, attempts to quit and the impact that Facebook has had on their job or studies.

Business Standard : Excessive use of social media platforms like Facebook can make its users take decisions as bad as drug addicts tend to do, a new study suggests.

"Around one-third of humans on the planet are using social media, and some of these people are displaying maladaptive, excessive use of these sites," said lead author of the study Dar Meshi, Assistant Professor at Michigan State University in the US.

"I believe that social media has tremendous benefits for individuals, but there's also a dark side when people can't pull themselves away. We need to better understand this drive so we can determine if excessive social media use should be considered an addiction," Meshi added.

For the study, published in the Journal of Behavior Addictions, the researchers had 71 participants take a survey that measured their psychological dependence on Facebook, similar to addiction.

Questions on the survey asked about users' preoccupation with the platform, their feelings when unable to use it, attempts to quit and the impact that Facebook has had on their job or studies.

The researchers then had the participants do the Iowa Gambling Task, a common exercise used by psychologists to measure decision-making.

To successfully complete the task, users identify outcome patterns in decks of cards to choose the best possible deck.

Meshi and his colleagues found that by the end of the gambling task, the worse people performed by choosing from bad decks, the more excessive their social media use.

The better they did in the task, the less their social media use.

People who abuse opioids, cocaine, methamphetamine, among others - have similar outcomes on the Iowa Gambling Task, thus showing the same deficiency in decision-making, the study said.

Facebook users need $1,000 to deactivate account for one year: Study

Facebook, with more than two billion global users, is among the social media websites that provide access at no cost.

Facebook users would require an average of more than $1,000 to deactivate their account for one year, according to a study.

The study, published in the journal PLOS ONE, assessed Facebook's value to its users, in contrast to its market value or its contribution to gross domestic product.

Researchers from Tufts University in the US used a series of auctions in which people were actually paid to close their accounts for as little as one day or as long as one year.

Facebook, with more than two billion global users, is among the social media websites that provide access at no cost.

The researchers found that Facebook users would require an average of more than $1,000 to deactivate their account for one year.

"Social media, and the internet more broadly, have changed the way we live and the way we keep in touch with friends and family, but it's hard to find evidence that the internet has made us richer or more productive at work," said Jay Corrigan, a professor at Kenyon College in the US.

"We know people must derive tremendous value from Facebook or they wouldn't spend millions of hours on the site every day. The challenge is how to put a dollar value on a service people don't pay for," Corrigan said.

The researchers ran three actual auctions, including two samples of college students, a community sample, and an online sample.

Winners were paid upon proof that their membership was deactivated for the set period of time.

"Auction participants faced real financial consequences, so had an incentive to seriously consider what compensation they would want to close their accounts for a set period of time and to bid truthfully," said Sean B Cash, a professor at Tufts University.

"Students placed a higher value on Facebook than community members. A number of participants refused to bid at all, suggesting that deactivating Facebook for a year was not a welcome possibility," Cash said.

ALSO READ: Privacy issues: Here's how to delete your Facebook, Instagram profiles

The study contrasts the company's market capitalisation with the value placed on it by its users, researchers said.

For example, based on a market valuation of about $420 billion, and about 2.2 billion users, the market value of Facebook would be approximately $190 per user, or less than one-fourth of the annual average value of Facebook access from any of the auction samples, researchers said.

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