#phototagging

Those friends who insist on a daily basis to share their lives through photos and status updates on Facebook and Instagram can be pretty annoying. It’s made worse when they include you in that picture upload, without asking and then go ahead and tag you as well! Now this can be a great picture or mostly it’s not and you yourself would never have uploaded it, so why should someone else be able to and think nothing of it? Is this a privacy issue or not?  

Source: Thorpe (nd) <http://www.someecards.com/usercards/viewcard/MjAxMi05NWQ3YjI1YzQzMjU2OWY1>

Facebook in particular has a heavy-duty facial recognition engine that has the ability to recognise you pretty much straight away, it then promotes you to tag each person in the picture (Brandom 2015). There has been much discussion about whether this is a privacy issue, and a lawsuit in 2015 in the US called into question the actual face recognition system, which Facebook then disputed (Brandom 2015). 

Source: Clark 2015 <https://www.classaction.org/blog/facebook-sued-over-face-recognition-feature>.

The impact of being tagged means that the horrible picture your ‘friend’ posted will now feature in their feed and your feed and will be seen by so many more people. On a personal level you agree to the terms and conditions when you sign up, so if someone uploads your photo or tags you then it is allowed. Your choice if you disliked the image or felt uncomfortable enough about it would be to ask the person to remove it, detag yourself, or complain direct to the social media platform and ask for it to be removed (eSafety 2017). There is however an option in settings where you can turn off being tagged by selecting “no one” to the question "Who sees tag suggestions when photos that look like you are uploaded?" (Brandom 2015).  

Source: Jason Farman 2014 <http://bit.ly/1s6JOIa>

The discussion around digital photography on social media platforms takes us to how much has photography changed from the Kodak camera (Jason Farman 2014)? The main change Nathan Jurgenson identifies in his interview (Jason Farman 2014) is the audience; he attributes this to the fact that old school photography wasn’t necessarily taken with the audience in mind. These days it seems the audience are the prime reason for the imagery. Nathan calls these images “social” photos and they are; photos that have been taken primarily to be uploaded to social media platforms (Jason Farman 2014). While using social media platforms allows for photos to be shared quickly and easily, this also means the social photos can be distributed without your authorisation, rendering you vulnerable (Vivienne & Burgess 2013, p. 282) and is something that everyone should be mindful and respectful of.

References

Brandom, R 2015, Is Facebook ‘s photo-tagging system violating privacy law?, The Verge, viewed 3 February 2017, <http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/21/10634100/facebook-photo-tagging-lawsuit-biometric-privacy-law>.

Clark 2015, ‘Facebook - facial recognition’ [image], in Facebook Sued Over Facial Recognition Software, ClassAction.org, viewed 3 February 2017, <https://www.classaction.org/blog/facebook-sued-over-face-recognition-feature>.

eSafety 2017, Games, apps and social networking, Office of the Children’s eSafety Commissioner, viewed 3 February 2017, <https://www.esafety.gov.au/esafety-information/games-apps-and-social-networking>.

Jason Farman 2014, Photography, Self Documentation, & Social Media: An Interview with Nathan Jurgenson, 16 June, viewed 3 February 2017, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnPtZ5lKDHo>.

Thorpe, A nd, ‘Confession’ [image], in Some Love, someecards, viewed 3February 2017, <http://www.someecards.com/usercards/viewcard/MjAxMi05NWQ3YjI1YzQzMjU2OWY1>.

You may not have paid too much attention to Snapchat but your teenager knows all about it. Why it is quite the rage