Clearview AI built a massive facial recognition database by scraping 30 billion photos from Facebook and other social media platforms without users’ permission, which law enforcement has accessed nearly a million times since 2017[1].
The company markets its technology to law enforcement as a tool “to bring justice to victims,” with clients including the FBI and Department of Homeland Security. However, privacy advocates argue it creates a “perpetual police line-up” that includes innocent people who could face wrongful arrests from misidentification[1:1].
Major social media companies like Facebook sent cease-and-desist letters to Clearview AI in 2020 for violating user privacy. Meta claims it has since invested in technology to combat unauthorized scraping[1:2].
While Clearview AI recently won an appeal against a £7.5m fine from the UK’s privacy watchdog, this was solely because the company only provides services to law enforcement outside the UK/EU. The ruling did not grant broad permission for data scraping activities[2].
The risks extend beyond law enforcement use - once photos are scraped, individuals lose control over their biometric data permanently. Critics warn this could enable:
- Retroactive prosecution if laws change
- Creation of unauthorized AI training datasets
- Identity theft and digital abuse
- Commercial facial recognition systems without consent[1:3]
Sources:
The worst part is you can’t opt out as a full real human. You can only opt out one image at a time. So you’ll never know what they have to complete the job.
I assure you, many people can and do opt of being full real humans and it is often because of the monsters who work at Clearview and their customers who make this planet and reality itself a really unacceptable place to be trapped in.
Dazzle camoflauge makeup, lets all be juggalos
I’m 4 Faygos ahead of you
Clearview AI was founded in 2017 by Hoan Ton-That and Richard Schwartz after transferring the assets of another company, SmartCheckr, which the pair originally founded in 2017 alongside Charles C. Johnson.[12][4] The company was founded in Manhattan after the founders met at the Manhattan Institute.[1] The company initially raised $8.4 million from investors including Kirenaga Partners and Peter Thiel
Of course Thiel is involved. That guy should really be not around anymore.
Thiel is scum and needs to pass away for his crimes instigating a fascist police state.
He should at least have “DO NOT DEVELOP MY APP” tatooed on his forehead.
Someone with selfies on a chat? Congrats, you are part of 30 billion winners 🏆
For now on I treat everyone with a cellphone like a cop. This actually makes my life way easier.
So they pirated data from Facebook for their own benefit?
Well, if the shoe fits…
That is from 2023.
Yes, but I don’t believe that now in 2025 are less logged images, but more, because improved AI since than. If you use Meta or any other Zuckerbot crap, you can request that it’s AI redact an Curriculum Vitae with photo from you with a simple click, complete for free, as nice service.
The date is relevant so people don’t think it’s some new Trump thing that just happened. No problem with posting the link but I think it’s best to include “(2023)” in the title.
I claimed my name for my Facebook account when it first came out, but I’ve never posted anything in it, especially any photos of my face.
I thought Facebook was a bad, creepy idea from the beginning.
I have never posted pictures on Facebook either, and have likewise always considered it extremely reckless for everybody else to put all of their information on there without even any protections in law and mechanisms of enforcement.
The federal government just streamlined purchasing information from data brokers, before every agency bought it piecemeal and they paid for the same information twice oftentimes. Now they basically buy everything and distribute it to the agencies that want it in an end run around the Bill of Rights. No warrants, no judges involved. Let alone probable cause or even reasonable suspicion for mass collection of data. https://theintercept.com/2025/05/22/intel-agencies-buying-data-portal-privacy/
Dumbfucks
I deleted my Facebook account a long time ago. And I don’t gave my face on Instagram anyway (it’s the sad Windows BSOD face)
Not to be a Debbie Downer but if you have friends they may be on Facebook and they’re taking pictures and you’re in them.
People look at me strangely when I ask them not to take pictures of me but I’m really insistent about it.
Have been since I got off Facebook a decade ago.
You can try to explain to these chucklefucks until you’re blue in the face that as bad as things are now an even bigger issue is what can happen in the future but they just don’t fucking get it.
“So what if they serve me ads” says stupid mcchucklefuck as they’re rounded up thirty years from now for ethnic cleansing based ten thousand Facebook photos.
Or not. Like - it’s impossible to predict the future but that’s the whole point - no one has any fucking idea so why engage in a practice which provides you fucking nothing but carries with it full unforgiving weight of that jagged question mark?
An ongoing reign of terror by a one party state run by the worst people in cooperation with the plutocracy is all but inevitable now.
The succession fight to our dear leader is the only real chance to take it back, but we still have the same worthless opposition in charge, chosen to be weak, to not offer reform, and to be constitutionally opposed to building and running a real political machine that could take the government from this Republican machine fixing to rig the elections every way they can.
It is also a brazen violation of the Fourth Amendment of the American Constitution. Using third parties to collect data on citizens without warrants or judicial oversight is a rejection of the highest laws they barely pretend to follow.
Cool and normal
My producer, Neigsendoig, had a few pictures of him from when he was younger be on the internet, because he had no clue about this. He’s probably blackmailable via said pictures now.
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