A Facebook patent for a technology that can identify your family based on photos

Facebook has filed a patent for a technology that could target entire families with commercials. The technology uses photos and other data collected by the social network.

In a patent filed last May and released Thursday, the company describes a system based on "in-depth learning techniques" to identify groups of people living under the same roof and their relations with each other . It uses image captions, hashtags, as well as internet provider and search data to create a cache of information stored and transmitted to its advertiser network. The technology would apparently apply to at least some of Facebook's proprietary applications, such as Instagram.

As the deposit says:

Examples of a user's image data include user profile photos, for example profile photos of the same user on different online systems, for example FACEBOOK ™. and INSTAGRAM ™

The technology relies on Facebook's "public-private" advertising technology, unveiled in June, which allows brands to target specific people within a household. The patent clearly states Facebook 's intention to target entire families with more clickable ads that it is currently broadcasting, stating:

"Existing content delivery solutions to a target household are not effective … Without this knowledge of a user's household characteristics, most of the content items sent to the user are ill-suited to the user and are probably ignored by the user. "

The patent contains an example of the use of the technology. In one figure, Facebook predicts the number of people in a household after analyzing the photos of a male user. Since the user regularly post photos with the same two women (and that's marked on the photos of other users with the same two women), Facebook infers that the three people make up a family. The software quotes the trio's shared devices and a caption with the words "my angel" to extrapolate their family ties.

The patent also explains how the process adapts to Facebook's advertising platform, maintaining "predictions with a user profile in the online system" and then displaying "content items targeting the user on the basis of predictions ".

Facebook's decision to make public the filing of its patent is suspect, given the ongoing succession of high-profile crises that rocked the company during the past calendar year. The company's invasive practices in data collection played a central role in the spillover: the Cambridge Analytica data mining scandal prompted the Senate to monitor early in the year, while massive security.

Although we do not know if Facebook will ever use this technology, the social network's advertising machine retains a paramount influence on our daily lives, and that does not seem to change soon.

Source: Buzzfeed News