Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
August 5th
I received a message via facebook messenger in my johnwilhelmisaphotoholic-fb-page inbox. A man introducing himself as Adam Torres told me he would like to buy my fb page. I clearly remember how I was laughing about it with my wife (who is actually my girlfriend but it confuses people all the time to have 4 kids with a girlfriend so I call her my wife) and how I wrote him back that I was not interested in money.
Earlier this month, Reverse engineering expert Jane Manchun Wong discovered that Facebook was about to start hiding like counts. And now it’s happening: the social media giant is testing hiding like counts in Australia, and the experiment could expand to more countries soon.
If you have ever uploaded a photo to Facebook, you know that its image recognition tech automatically suggests tags of people. This feature was set to default, but Facebook announced yesterday that it will no longer offer tag suggestions when you upload a photo. In other words, its facial recognition will no longer be set to default.
As you may know, Instagram is testing hiding like counts in seven countries. But according to recent reports, Facebook may soon follow. Reverse engineering expert Jane Manchun Wong discovered the prototype of hidden like counts in Facebook Android app. Just like Instagram’s tested feature, it shows a few people who liked your post but hides the total number of likes.
As many of you know, Facebook is the company behind Instagram and WhatsApp. But the social media giant is about to make that even clearer. Soon, Facebook will be rebranding its platforms so that it adds its name to them. Therefore, we’ll soon have “Instagram from Facebook” and “WhatsApp from Facebook.”
The “curated” content Instagram feeds. We all know them, we’ve all seen them, maybe we even follow one or two. Such accounts don’t actually create anything of their own, instead relying on other people to create imagery which they can then steal and repost share to their own feeds in order to try to build up some kind of audience.
Ok, to be fair, the reputable ones do ask permission first. But some of these accounts are dedicated to just posting memes. So, Instagram had what’s being called the “meme purge” recently and deleted a bunch of them. Accounts followed by millions of people. Now, the creators of those accounts are moaning about losing out on hundreds of thousands of dollars of income.
Facebook’s always at the centre of some privacy controversy or other these days. Programmer Edin Jusupovic, spotted something rather odd recently when looking at a hex dump of an image file of unknown origin. After doing a little investigation, it appears to be IPTC “Special Instructions” injected into the image by Facebook.
This header is then kept with the file, as it gets downloaded and reposted around the web. This data seems to have been around since at least 2015, but it seems to have largely gone unnoticed. Now, though, it’s seeing renewed interest in light of recent events and it presents, in Jusupovic’s words, a “shocking level of tracking”.
Facebook has the policy to ban photographic nudity, which has been a problem for many photographers who share their work on Facebook and Instagram. But this could soon change. Photographer Spencer Tunick recently organized a nude photo shoot outside of company’s offices to challenge its policies. As a result, Facebook will reconsider its nudity guidelines when it comes to photographic art.
Last year Instagram started removing fake follows, comments, and likes from the platform. However, the fight has just got fiercer. Instagram’s parent company, Facebook, has recently filed a lawsuit against a New Zealand-based company that offered these services.
About three days ago, we started seeing a new gimmick on Facebook, images that appear to “move in 3D” when you scroll through them or move your mouse cursor over them. This is a parallax effect and it can be accomplished by providing Facebook with a depth map (e.g. “arches_depth.png”) along with the original image (“arches.png”). The two need to have the same resolution and the depth map needs to be generated in a way that close objects are white and far away objects are black.
You can find out more about John on his website and follow his adventures on YouTube and Facebook.
can change a lens mid-rappel, swap a memory card while treading water, or use a camel as a light stand.
To see more of his work please visit his studio website blurMEDIAphotography, or follow him on Twitter, 500px, Google Plus or YouTube.
JP’s photography is available for licensing at Stocksy United.
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