What Happened to Us with FaceApp

This week, I have prepared an article on what we saw, heard and learned about the FaceApp application, which is one of the most popular topics of recent days. Happy reading.

• FaceApp, a photography application that shapes our faces using artificial intelligence algorithms, has been on the social media agenda of the last week. It has become viral especially with its feature that takes you ten, twenty, thirty years later with an assertive visual richness.

• Celebrities appeared again in the spread of the application. The app went viral when popular elements combined with a sense of wonder. FaceApp is currently the best free app on Apple's App Store.

We've seen that the app, which finds a convincing answer to how we look when we get older, carries great insight. And we can't blame anyone because the technology used is very good. Who wouldn't want to see and share a stunning representation of what it could look like in 30 years?

• Even after sharing our photos specifically for the application, we focused on the dazzling output of the application without questioning whether data privacy is important or what we approve or approve.

• FaceApp's viral success has proven that we can never take our digital privacy seriously. We worried, we doubted, but the behavior of the majority still did not change.

• FaceApp has the right to use the photos you uploaded, and we transfer all rights to the application. In addition, it is not possible to get rid of this mess by deleting the application, it is written in the contract details that the transferred rights are irreversible even if the application is deleted. Who has read these details?

• Social media still maintains its spreading power! Even an application based on very good insights can go viral and have millions of people download it.

• There is still a prejudice to shy away from Russian-based companies. The fact that the servers of the application are located in the Amazon infrastructure in the USA did not change this fact. The company also said that the images were deleted from their servers 48 hours after they were uploaded.

• Concerns persist on the US side that FaceApp may help in training facial recognition software or that FaceApp is somehow providing information to the Russian government. U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., asked the FBI and FTC to investigate the app to find out how it collects user data and what it could be used for. We are in a world where we can no longer call it an entertainment-oriented application.

• The investment made by Wireless Lab, the owner of the app, in artificial intelligence over the past two years has generated millions of dollars in revenue.

• It has been proven that our interest in artificial intelligence will increase as we see its impact on our daily lives, along with the results.

• In general, the application offers as much security as the other social media channels you upload your photos to, and we said OK for all the rights it would receive to an application that we met for the first time. However, any new condition that is not found in Facebook and similar big technology companies does not seem to be specific to data privacy.

• Within the scope of the possibility of using biometric data in different ways, the uncertainty on the dark side of the business continues.

• We have seen once again that the spread of an application like a virus on digital users can create risks not only at the commercial but also at the military level.

• Even important issues such as the Cambridge Analytica scandal do not have the same impact on the behavioral changes that must be implemented in the public eye. The swirling discussions about FaceApp reminded us that the security and privacy of users' personal data will come to the fore with different applications very often.

• A consumer alone cannot get technology companies to change their services, this change can be achieved by consumers who are uncomfortable with privacy policy demanding better privacy legislation and doing this in an organized way.

• The income model you use in the technology you develop will be your output: Yaroslav Goncharov also stated to the BBC that the confidentiality agreement of his application is very general, that they do not have a purpose of sharing photos for advertising purposes, and that the fees they receive from users who want to reach different features constitute their main income model.

• The good news is that users, who became aware of the news about data privacy and security in the public, made very serious requests for the deletion of data, and the company announced that it is trying to respond to requests on this issue.

• Many privacy regulations, including the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation, include the right to request the deletion of your data. However, this right raised the problem that it doesn't apply when your data is used to train AI and machine learning systems, or when your face is added to facial recognition data without your knowledge.

• Facial recognition is just the tip of the iceberg. Amazon Alexa and Google Home devices listen to everything you say. Roombas maps your floor plans. Strava and Fitbit save your location. Ancestry.com collects your very sensitive genetic information and is essentially proprietary to them. Our current laws cannot handle the amount of data collected about individuals, as Harvard professor Shoshanna Zuboff said.

And FaceApp was a test. We haven't passed that test yet.