A brand new trend has taken over all our social media. Yes, it’s the 10 year challenge! From celebrities to the neighbour next door, everyone is taking this challenge and showing off how they look better now (or not?).
For those of you who live under the rock: 10 year challenge is a viral social media trend/challenge wherein the person taking the challenge has to upload a picture from 10 years ago and then a current picture to show the change in him/her in 10 years.
Some people are enjoying doing this and laughing at their old self while many others are finding this challenge absolutely ridiculous and futile! While we can go on and on about the good and bad of the challenge, I’d like to bring your attention to something!
NOBODY KNOWS WHERE THE CHALLENGE BEGAN!
Isn’t this a little odd?
It wasn’t until Kate O’Neill, a writer for Wired with some insight in the digital field, wrote how she thinks the challenge is more than just a fun thing to share on social media that questions about the challenge started to rise.
She argued how it can totally be a way devised by the Facebook team to collect data for building algorithms for facial recognition. It’s a no brainer that Facebook breaches privacy and collects data of it’s users.
If they had to develop a facial recognition software, a larger data set and fixed duration of time would be needed to assess different parameters related to age and that’s exactly what the 10 year challenge is!
Also, many users on Facebook don’t upload their own pictures as their display and sometimes have graphics or other family members as their DP (display picture). In such a case, the 10 year challenge is a perfect excuse for Facebook to collect data of users for facial recognition algorithms.
Once fully developed, they can even share this technology with other digital platforms for profits. No law yet prohibits such sharing of technology.
Facebook, on the other hand, has categorically denied any ulterior motive behind this challenge. They have maintained that “it’s a user generated meme which started on it’s own”, which sounds like a perfect cover up.
Additionally, even if Facebook didn’t start this trend, with almost 3.2 million people on the platform, it is still likely to benefit from thousands of people sharing their old and new pictures to develop its facial recognition technology.
If any of this speculation is true by any means, then it’s a serious threat to people’s privacy as well as security. Moreover, the data breaches by Facebook in the past have only been lessons on why we should use technology with precaution and question it on every step of the way.
On the brighter side, at least this trend is making people aware about the damage they have been causing to environment since 10 years and forcing them to do their bit to help save it!
What do you think about this? Let us know in the comments below.
Source: Forbes, GlobalNews, ZeroHedge + more
Picture Credits: Google Images
Find the blogger: @innoosense
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