Facebook’s ’10 year challenge’ is just a harmless meme, the real issue is Facebook itself.

The idea that you should not participate in # 10yearschallenge because Facebook would steal our metadata sounds very alarmist and even naive. Not because Facebook will not use this data to enhance its artificial intelligence, but because Facebook already does it with all the data we post on the network.

Our data (and photos) of years and years are already in the network, checking the aging process by facial recognition with this database is much more useful than picking up two photos with 10 year difference and nothing in between. And Facebook already has the data you need — the challenge just helps improving the process.

But the thing here is: If you’re on Facebook you know what they do to your data (at least to some extent) and you agree with it. That is, the idea that the challenge is something beyond the continuity of a process that already exists is only alarmism.

No doubt the idea that people do not necessarily post pictures in chronological order complicates Facebook’s artificial intelligence (AI), but there is no guarantee that people are also posting photos of before and after with the correct dates, or with useful subtitles, or that they are not just playing with photos of other times, in other words, the idea that without the challenge the sheer amount of data with allegedly no chronological order would confuse Facebook’s AI, as Kate O’neill wrote, is an exaggeration. It is interesting that O’Neill “trusts” AI to recognize jokes and the like in the 10-year challenge, but do not trust or think AI is intelligent enough to do its job with older pictures.

Of course, Facebook’s AI will take advantage of the challenge to collect data, but in the end everything around the social network has this objective. It is only a continuation of what already exists, it is not an alarming news (the whole of the story is that it is alarming).

In this aspect the challenge is not “harmless” because everything that we put here in this network is intended to improve AI, from being used for advertising to generating profit for others.

Many companies use facial recognition applications in their products. Google employs the identification of faces in Google Photos, as well as Apple on their phones and computers. So far there is nothing new. Facebook also uses facial recognition to identify individuals in the photos that are posted on the platform. There’s absolutely no reason for concern about this particular challenge, this particular use of your date — what you should be worried is about the use of your data at all times by Facebook and other social networks. Again, the company already has access to your photos and can already use them to feed the algorithm.

Let’s not forget that in addition to users posting photos that are not necessarily from when they say they were taken, of animal, landscapes, also distorted photos can be used … And this is an important issue, with the growth of the use of filters (such as those from Instagram), photos can be easily distorted, modified, making it difficult the work of AI’s on facial recognition algorithms. Placing two photos side by side may not be the best way to train Facebook’s easy AI recognition.

It is also worth remembering, as Kif Leswing pointed out in Business Insider, that mobile cameras are automatically smoothing user’s skin in photos. Cosmopolitan magazine tested 15 Samsung’s filters and the results show that selfies can be really deceiving, thus making AI’s “life” quite complicated.

Geoffrey Fowler asks, at The Washington Post, “if our phones are making up colors and lighting to please us, does it really count as photography? Or is it computer-generated artwork?”. That’s a great question, but the issue here is that we may not be looking at someone and someone’s natural aging process (or actual appearance), but to computer-generated artwork, thus, once again, making AI’s “life” a bit more complicated that most assume.

Sure you can guess that the challenge can make it easier for AI to learn as it gives more researchable material (even with all the distortions), but that’s merely a detail. The only thing “harmless” would simply not upload any photo to any social network, even delete Facebook and other networks. Turning a hermit also helps.

It is obvious that the more data that is uploaded to social networks, the better it will be for artificial intelligence to learn, whether based on photos, our tastes and preferences, or through our comments and friends. If there is a reason for concern, we should be worried with social networks that use our data through permissions that nobody bothers to read — and the situation becomes even more worrying when we notice that being outside of Facebook or other platforms is almost a social suicide.

There is a natural attraction and social pressure to “exist” on social networks, and Facebook (among others) takes advantage to force rules that we do not necessarily agree with, but we are forced to accept to maintain our social lives (not counting the millions of people who simply have no idea how their data is used and completely ignore the rules of the social networks they subscribe).

That is, our concern should be less with a challenge in which we post before and after photos and more with the way such networks operate.

More interesting and even clever than this kind of panic would be finding ways to demand accountability from companies like Facebook on the use of data, pushing politicians/legislators to impose clear and cumbersome rules on data usage.