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Posts Tagged ‘Facebook’

Facebook Rights Manager updated to give photographers more control over their images

23 Sep

Facebook has announced a new rights management feature designed to give creators more control over their images. On Monday, Facebook product manager of the creator and publisher experience Dave Axelgard said, ‘We want to ensure Facebook is a safe and valuable place for creators to share their content.’ Key to that goal is the newly announced Rights Manager for Images.

Instagram is the dominant image-based social network at the moment, making it a valuable platform for creators…but it’s not without its controversy in the industry. Parent company Facebook is taking steps to address some of the criticism with its new Rights Manager for Images, which builds upon the existing Rights Manager to give photographers control over where their images appear on the social platform.

Rights Manager is a customizable tool found within the Facebook Creator Studio platform, which is built for creators to give them an element of control over their content across both Facebook and Instagram. The tool works by enabling users to add their content, after which Facebook will scan the two social platforms to find the content if it is posted on either.

Reposted content found on another user’s Page or profile can be removed or, in cases where it may be beneficial to the creator, the owner can either add an ownership link to the content or simply monitor the repost going forward. Creators have the option of adding exemptions for partners who have permission to share the content so that it isn’t flagged by the Rights Manager tool.

The newly announced Rights Manager for Images is described by Axelgard as a new version of the tool that is designed to offer management of photos ‘at scale.’ As with the original version of Rights Manager, Facebook requires creators to submit an application to get access to the tool.

The application includes selecting which Pages the user may want to protect, what type of rights owner they are (individual, publisher, etc.), the type of content that needs protected and similar details.

Facebook notes that this Rights Manager tool exists in addition to a number of other options creators have, including what it refers to as a ‘fast and effective’ intellectual property reporting system, as well as a policy for dealing with repeat copyright offenders and more. The tool ultimately gives creators the ability to prevent unauthorized sharing of copyrighted content, potentially bringing an end to reposts on Instagram.

It’s unclear how many creators have access to the Rights Manager, which addresses only one aspect of copyright issues on social media. Facebook has been criticized for failing to give Instagram users the ability to limit the sharing of public posts, something that was recently brought to public attention due to a couple of lawsuits earlier this year.

Facebook indicated earlier this summer that it may give Instagram users the ability to disable sharing or embedding posts, which would, for example, prevent media companies from embedding images to get around paying the photographer a licensing fee. The social media company complicated the matter in June when it clarified that its terms of service does not include sublicensing embedded content.

Though this may give creators more control over where their images are embedded, critics have said that it still places the burden on creators to find and police the use of their images due to Instagram’s readily available sharing and embedding tools. As well, the presence of these tools implies to users that they are allowed to embed public content on other websites without getting permission from the photographer first, potentially putting them at risk of unwittingly violating a photographer’s copyright.

Instagram told Ars Technica back in June that it was ‘exploring the possibility’ of offering users the option of disabling the embed tool. Such a feature remains unavailable at this time, however, meaning that Instagram users must make their images private if they don’t want users to have the option of sharing them.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Mashable embedded image copyright case revived over surprising Facebook statement

26 Jun

The 2016 copyright infringement case against the media website Mashable that we last heard about in April is back again. Following a similar case with an opposite ruling regarding how copyright infringement may pertain to embedded Instagram posts, the US District Court for the Southern District of New York has reopened the copyright suit filed by photographer Stephanie Sinclair against Mashable.

Sinclair’s lawsuit is part of a copyright spat between the photographer and Mashable after the website embedded one of her Instagram posts in a 2016 article titled ’10 female photojournalists with their lenses on social justice.’ Mashable had first reached out to Sinclair and offered $ 50 to license the image, an offer that she rejected. As an apparent loophole to this matter, Mashable then simply embedded Sinclair’s public Instagram post featuring the same image.

A screenshot of the article in question. Sinclair’s Instagram photo has since been removed.

In her lawsuit, Sinclair had argued that Mashable did not have permission nor a license to use the image, while Mashable countered that it didn’t need the photographer’s permission because Instagram’s terms covered sublicensing. Instagram’s terms of service stated at the time that users:

…hereby grant to [Instagram] a non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable, sub-licensable, worldwide license to host, use, distribute, modify, run, copy, publicly perform or display, translate, and create derivative works of your content (consistent with your privacy and application settings). You can end this license anytime by deleting your content or account.’

Based on its understanding of those terms, the court ruled against Sinclair, stating in April that, ‘Mashable was within its rights to seek a sublicense from Instagram when Mashable failed to obtain a license directly from Plaintiff…’

However, Instagram’s parent company Facebook introduced a plot twist earlier this month when it clarified in relation to a different but similar case against Newsweek that its terms do not cover sublicensing for embedded images. According to Facebook, and despite the fact that Instagram offers a ‘share’ function on public images by default, users must first get permission from the photographer before embedding their image.

This unexpected turn of events was a bittersweet moment, offering reassurance that Instagram users have more control over their images than previously thought, but with major implications for how future digital copyright cases are handled. Users who are unaware of the intricacies of Instagram’s terms could, for example, be liable for copyright infringement by simply using the feature made available to them by the platform.

Facebook’s statement has prompted the reopening of Sinclair’s copyright case, as the ruling in favor of Mashable was made with the understanding that Instagram’s terms covered sublicensing for embedded images. Sinclair filed a motion for reconsideration with the court in light of the new information, a request that has since been granted.

The case has been reopened because, according to presiding judge Kimba Wood, Mashable didn’t get ‘explicit consent’ from Instagram to embed the photo under its sublicensing terms. The lawsuit against Mashable can proceed, with Judge Wood stating in the court’s Opinion & Order that:

Revising its previous holding, the Court holds that the pleadings contain insufficient evidence to find that Instagram granted Mashable a sublicense to embed Plaintiff’s Photograph on its website … the Court did not give full force to the requirement that a license must convey the licensor’s “explicit consent” to use a copyrighted work.

The two new cases over Instagram embedding and how it pertains to copyright has renewed criticism of the platform for failing to give users more control over their content. Instagram automatically presents a sharing feature on all public Instagram posts, yet has made it clear that it doesn’t sublicense content shared with this feature, putting users at risk of liability.

Photographers are given the choice to make their images private, therefore removing the embed function, but with the consequence of reduced exposure to potential clients and customers. Enabling photographers to manually choose whether the sharing function is enabled on their public posts would remove this issue, but is not something Instagram presently offers.

In a statement to Ars Technica, Instagram had addressed this topic by stating that it was ‘considering the possibility’ of adding a new feature that would allow users to decide whether others can embed their public images. The non-committal nature of the statement, however, indicates that Instagram may never proceed to introduce such modification to this feature, putting the burden on photographers and users to sort out the copyright implications of using it.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Facebook Announces Secure Transfer of Photos/Videos from Facebook to Google Photos

01 May

The post Facebook Announces Secure Transfer of Photos/Videos from Facebook to Google Photos appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Jaymes Dempsey.

Google Photos

If you need a way to quickly move all your media from Facebook to Google Photos, then you’re in luck.

As of this past Thursday, you can transfer photos and videos from Facebook straight over to Google Photos.

For those who are unfamiliar:

Google Photos is the default photo application on Android devices, but it’s also available for Apple users. It’s a great way to store photos of all types, including smartphone shots, personal snaps, portfolio images, and more.

In fact, the app features essentially unlimited storage capacity (though there are caps on file sizes). Since Google Photos uses cloud storage, you can view stored images from all of your devices, as well as on the web (at photos.google.com).

As for the Facebook integration:

In just a few clicks, you’ll be able to take photos you’ve uploaded to Facebook and copy them on over to Google Photos.

Why is this so useful?

For one, Google Photos packs an excellent search function. So you’ll be able to navigate through your photos more quickly on Google Photos versus Facebook.

Google Photos also includes advanced photo organization capabilities that Facebook lacks, so you can carefully catalog and curate thousands of images with ease.

Now, if you’re interested in using this transfer function, just follow a few simple steps.

(Note that the process is slightly different on desktop versus mobile, but the general path is the same.)

First, head over to your Facebook “Settings.”

tap settings

On mobile, scroll down until you find “Transfer a Copy of Your Photos or Videos,” and select this option. On a desktop, you’ll need to click on “Your Facebook Information.”

your facebook information

Then select “Transfer a Copy of Your Photos or Videos.”

select transfer a copy of your photos or videos

Facebook will prompt you to enter your password. Then you’ll be asked to select a destination for your photos; right now, Google Photos is the only choice, but Facebook has indicated an interest in adding additional options in the future.

You’ll also need to indicate whether you want to transfer your photos or your videos. Note that you can always start with photos but come back and transfer videos later.

select your destination and what you want to transfer

Hit “Next.” You may be asked to enter your Google Photos password and, once done, you’ll need to confirm that you wish to transfer your media.

hit next

Finally, click “Confirm Transfer”, and you’re done!

select confirm transfer

So for anyone looking to add Facebook images to Google Photos, go ahead and try this function out!

But, as always, also read the fine print and see if there are any privacies or image rights you may be giving when integrating these options.

The post Facebook Announces Secure Transfer of Photos/Videos from Facebook to Google Photos appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Jaymes Dempsey.


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Former Facebook employees claim Instagram hid ‘likes’ to increase post frequency

12 Dec

A new report claims on behalf of three former Facebook employees that Instagram is hiding ‘likes’ as an experiment to determine whether doing so will get users to post more content. The theory, according to CNBC, is that users who receive few likes on their content may not post as often out of a sense of embarrassment. By hiding likes, Instagram may remove the psychological barrier preventing many users from frequently posting.

Over the course of its test this year, Instagram repeatedly presented its decision to hide likes as an effort to ‘depressurize’ the platform, reduce cyberbullying, and help users focus on the subjects and people who interest them. By hiding likes, the company has said, Instagram will feel less like a popularity contest.

The anonymous sources speaking to CNBC claim that it was parent company Facebook’s research that spurred the hidden likes test. The social media company allegedly found that removing public like counts resulted in Instagram users posting more often.

One source claims that Facebook’s research showed users were deleting or hiding posts that didn’t receive many likes, among other things. Whereas the lack of publicly visible likes helps users feel less self-conscious when their content doesn’t get much attention, the delivery of like and comment notifications to these same users may provide an incentive for them to post more often.

Instagram is allegedly aware of the fact that hidden ‘likes’ may have a negative impact on influencers by reducing the amount of engagement on their posts, but the sources claim that Facebook isn’t terribly concerned due to the lack of adequate competing services these influencers have available to them. This may not matter for the company in the long run if enough users start posting often enough to noticeably boost ad revenue, potentially making up for any negative effects on influencers.

The question remains over whether the ‘depressurized’ nature of a publicly like-free Instagram will lead to the more habitual use of the platform among some users, potentially paving the way for an uptick in ‘Instagram addiction’ cases. If a sense of peer pressure is causing many users to inherently moderate their use of the platform, removing that psychological barrier may have some unwanted consequences.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Facebook rolling out new tool to transfer your Facebook photos to Google Photos

03 Dec

In 2018, Facebook announced its participation in the Data Transfer Project, a collaboration between tech giants Apple, Google, Microsoft and Twitter designed to make it easier for users of online services to move data securely and easily between those services.

Facebook is now getting the Data Transfer Project moving by announcing an open-source tool that lets you move all your Facebook photos to Google Photos. For now the tool is only available to some users in Ireland but should be available globally in early 2020.

Facebook also says the tool will work with other services which are likely Apple’s iCloud and Microsoft’s OneDrive.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Facebook explains how its AI helps Instagram users discover new images

27 Nov

In a new technical post on its Artificial Intelligence blog, Facebook details the technology that determines which images Instagram users see in the platform’s Explore tab. According to the company, it had to develop ‘novel engineering solutions’ in order to select a relatively minuscule number of recommended images, videos, and Stories out of the billions of options each time the Explore tab is opened.

Instagram’s Explore tab is found by tapping the magnifying glass icon within the service’s mobile app. The content presented within this tab is a small selection chosen from the billions of images and videos uploaded by users. Instagram uses machine learning (ML) to determine which content is most relevant to the user, helping them discover the types of images and videos they’re most likely to care about.

Facebook explains in its new post that Instagram’s Explore tab is powered by a three-part ‘ranking funnel’ system that is capable of making 90 million model predictions in a single second. Engineers developed multiple systems to ensure that Instagram’s Explore recommendations are ‘both high quality and fresh,’ among other things.

Facebook explains:

After creating the key building blocks necessary to experiment easily, identify people’s interests effectively, and produce efficient and relevant predictions, we had to combine these systems together in production.

The overall recommendation system first engages in what Facebook calls Candidate Generation, which determines the accounts (‘seed accounts’) an Instagram user may be interested in based on the accounts they already follow. Using these seed accounts, the AI then uses embedding techniques to find other accounts similar to the first batch it found.

Using this entire batch of accounts, Instagram’s system then determines which images and videos those users engaged with (likes, shares, etc.), as well as the content they posted. Thousands of candidate posts are identified for each average person using the platform, according to Facebook.

Once the candidates are identified, the system takes 500 of them and ranks them using a three-part ranking infrastructure. The first pass in this ranking system uses a distillation model to select 150 of the highest-quality posts from the 500 candidates.

The second pass utilizes a lightweight neural network to pick 50 of the highest-quality posts from the batch of 150. Finally, the third and final pass uses a deep neural network to pick 25 candidates that are both most relevant to the user and of the highest quality. Those 25 candidates appear on the first page of the Instagram Explore tab.

The selection process isn’t quite as simple as it sounds. Facebook explains that its system predicts which individual actions users will take on any given post, such as whether they’ll ‘like’ or share it — or, alternatively, whether they’ll have a negative response, which is something like choosing to ‘see fewer posts’ like the one they were recommended. The system can be designed to give more weight to certain predicted actions than others.

Instagram’s Explore tab factors in the intention of showing users posts related to new interests in addition to their existing interests, according to Facebook, which explains:

We add a simple heuristic rule into value model to boost the diversity of content. We downrank posts from the same author or same seed account by adding a penalty factor, so you don’t see multiple posts from the same person or the same seed account in Explore.

The ultimate goal of Instagram’s Explore tab is helping users find new, relevant, and interesting content from other users. Facebook says that its engineers are ‘continuously evolving’ the discovery tab.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Facebook fixes iOS bug that triggered the camera app on iPhone

15 Nov

Facebook has released an update that fixes a bug in its iOS app related to the iPhone camera app, something that had raised privacy concerns among users.

On Tuesday, a report from CNET highlighted a complaint from some Facebook users on iPhone who shared videos showing a bizarre bug involving the phone’s camera app. At least two different scenarios were found that would cause the Facebook app to become off-center on the phone’s display.

The iPhone’s camera app with its live view would be visible next to the offset Facebook app, spurring conspiracy theories that the social network may have been deliberately using the device’s camera to collect data on the user. In a tweet, however, Facebook VP of Integrity Guy Rosen explained that a recently published bug fix for a different issue caused the Facebook app to ‘partially’ navigate to the iPhone’s camera.

Soon after on Wednesday, November 13, Facebook released a fix for the problem through the App Store. Users will need to download and install the latest update to fix the bug. Some users have reported an inability to trigger the camera bug after updating, indicating that it is an effective fix.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Facebook expands Face Recognition photo scanning, makes feature opt-in for new users

06 Sep

Facebook will no longer scan uploaded images for users’ faces by default, according to The Verge. The change will apply to new users who receive the Face Recognition setting as Facebook rolls it out globally over the next several weeks. The Face Recognition feature, which was first introduced in late 2017, will not be turned on unless the user chooses to enable it.

The facial recognition feature works by scanning images for users’ faces and alerting them about these images even if they’re not tagged in them. Users who receive one of these alerts can choose to tag themselves in the image, ignore it, or report the image when applicable.

In an update on the technology following the outcome of its federal appeal in August, Facebook has revealed that the facial recognition feature is rolling out to all users, but that they’ll need to manually enable it if they want the platform to scan other users’ images for their face. A notice in the user’s News Feed will alert that user when the feature becomes available on their account.

Users will be able to find the Face Recognition feature in their account’s Settings menu. Facebook users who currently have Face Recognition on their accounts can find instructions on disabling it here.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Instagram will soon receive ‘from Facebook’ branding

06 Aug

Despite ongoing antitrust concerns across the globe, an internal note sent to Facebook employees has announced the social media giant will be rebranding its Instagram and WhatsApp platforms.

First reported by The Information [partial paywall], the two social media platforms will soon be known as ‘Instagram from Facebook’ and ‘WhatsApp from Facebook.’ The news was further confirmed by a Facebook spokesperson in a statement shared with Engadget:

‘We want to be clearer about the products and services that are part of Facebook.’

The addition of ‘from Facebook’ in Instagram’s branding doesn’t come as much of a surprise though, as known finder of unreleased features, Jane Manchun Wong, shared back in April that the ‘Instagram from Facebook’ branding was around the corner.

Instagram was acquired by Facebook in April 2012 for approximately one billion dollars in both cash and stock. Since then, Facebook has been fairly hands-off with the branding, despite bringing countless Facebook-inspired elements to the photo sharing platform, including the highly controversial algorithmic feed. This name change might be small on the surface, but could be the beginning of changes to come.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Facebook will reconsider nudity policies following large nude photo shoot near NYC HQ

08 Jun

The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) has announced that Facebook will ‘reconsider’ its policies related to ‘artistic nudity’ following a large nude photo shoot that took place in front of the company’s NYC headquarters. In April, the NCAC launched the #WeTheNipple campaign that called out Facebook and Instagram over its nudity policies.

‘Social media has dramatically increased artists’ ability to reach–and build–their audiences,’ the NCAC said as part of its campaign. ‘Unless their medium is photography and their subject is the body.’

On its current policy page detailing the subject matter, Facebook states, ‘Our nudity policies have become more nuanced over time.’ In providing an example of this ‘more nuanced’ approach, the company explains:

For example, while we restrict some images of female breasts that include the nipple, we allow other images, including those depicting acts of protest, women actively engaged in breast-feeding, and photos of post-mastectomy scarring. We also allow photographs of paintings, sculptures, and other art that depicts nude figures.

At this time, Facebook explicitly bans images that feature ‘real nude adults’ across a variety of categories. An exception is made for images that feature nude figures in ‘paintings, sculptures, and other art,’ but critics point out that the social network has repeatedly removed artistic images depicting nudity in the past.

On June 2, American photographer Spencer Tunick, who has a long history of organizing large nude photo shoots, captured artistic images of 125 people posed nude in front of Facebook’s New York City headquarters. The images, which have been shared on Instagram (probably NSFW), feature nude participants using ‘male nipple stickers’ and prints to cover the parts of their bodies prohibited from display by Facebook’s nudity policy.

According to NCAC, Facebook’s policy team will convene a group of its employees and stakeholders, among them being artists, museum curators, and activists, and explore ‘how to better serve’ the artists on its platform. The NCAC says it will be collaborating with Facebook on convening this group in order to make sure its policy ‘is well-formed by external experts and perspectives.’

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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