“Whether or not this would be used for facial recognition and age progression algorithms, it could be and we need to start thinking about what the potential uses of our information could be before we share it willy nilly.” “I’m sure most people when they post that 10 Year Challenge, they’re like ‘Oh, I’m posting this so my friends can get a laugh at how big my hair was 10 years ago and they’re not thinking beyond that,” she told CTVNews.ca on Friday.
O’Neill acknowledged many of the images were already on Facebook, but it would be difficult to know exactly when the photos were taken.Įnter the 10 Year Challenge meme – the perfect source, according to O’Neill, because users have helpfully provided dates and context for the photos to provide a “clean, simple, helpfully labeled set of then-and-now photos.”īrenda McPhail, the director of the Privacy, Technology, and Surveillance Project for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, said she suspects most people share photos of themselves without thinking of the potential consequences. It would help if you knew they were taken a fixed number of years apart-say, 10 years,” she said. “Ideally, you'd want a broad and rigorous dataset with lots of people's pictures. She proposed a scenario in which someone was attempting to train a facial recognition algorithm on age-related characteristics and age progression. In a follow-up opinion piece published by WIRED magazine, O’Neill elaborated on her theory. “Me now: ponders how all this data could be mined to train facial recognition algorithms on age progression and age recognition.” “Me 10 years ago: probably would have played along with the profile picture aging meme going around on Facebook and Instagram,” she wrote. While the meme seems harmless enough, tech writer and Fortune 500 advisor Kate O’Neill raised an unsettling prospect about the fad on Twitter last weekend. #10YearChallenge: I kid myself that not much has changed after 10 yrs, other than my hair colour & hair line! My hair is greyer & thinner, but I’m still enjoying what I do. Time sure does fly when you are having fun!! #10YearChallenge /gruONFaDDn
Since the meme was introduced – it’s unclear by whom – it’s become wildly popular on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter with millions of people participating in the trend.Ĭelebrities such as Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Lopez shared before-and-after photos of themselves looking like they barely aged while Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong uploaded images of himself poking fun at how grey his hair had become in the past 10 years.Ī post shared by Jennifer Lopez on at 1:34pm PST The “challenge” asks social media users to post side-by-side images of the first profile photo they ever shared on the social media platform (or one from approximately 10 years ago) alongside an image of themselves from the present.
As innocuous as it may seem, the viral “10 Year Challenge” flooding social media feeds everywhere may have been created to collect large amounts of data for future facial recognition software, according to one prominent tech writer.Īlthough its inception is hard to pin point exactly, the so-called “10 Year Challenge” or “How Hard Did Aging Hit You” or “Glow Up Challenge” meme appears to have started picking up steam shortly after the New Year.