Ryan Mac  Verified account

@RMac18

tech reporter . ryan.mac@nytimes.com & rmac18@protonmail.com. DMs open. On Signal--ask for my number

LA
nytimes.com/by/ryan-mac
Joined June 2009
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  1. Pinned Tweet
    Aug 10

    My first story for the NYT is up. It's a look at how Facebook has tried and failed over the last two years to deal with the racist abuse of English soccer players.

    38 replies 228 retweets 842 likes
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  2. Retweeted
    Nov 3

    Nice work , and : Australia Has Ordered Clearview AI To Delete All Facial Recognition Data Belonging To Its Citizens

    1 reply 19 retweets 44 likes
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  3. Nov 3

    Reading the full Oct 2021 report from the Aus regulator (OAIC), it states that the Australian Federal Police, Victoria Police, Queensland Police, and South Australian Police used Clearview AI. That is *exactly* what reported in Feb. 2020:

    6 retweets 7 likes
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  4. Nov 3

    Around the world, many police and gov agencies that initially denied the use of Clearview AI went back and found employees on free trials. To see which agencies used Clearview in your community, you can search here: US: Non-US:

    1 reply 3 retweets 10 likes
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  5. Nov 3

    Australian police use of Clearview further illustrates how there was little or no oversight. Here’s the Australian Federal Police denying to BuzzFeed News in Feb 2020 that its employees used Clearview. They have since admitted to trying the software.

    1 reply 12 likes
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  6. Nov 3

    An investigation found that Australian police had been using trials of Clearview between Oct 2019 and March 2020. BuzzFeed News reported on some of those agencies and their free trials based on internal Clearview data we viewed back in Feb 2020:

    3 replies 4 retweets 15 likes
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  7. Nov 3

    An Australian regulator ruled Clearview AI breached privacy laws and illegally collected citizens’ personal data. It’s ordering Clearview to stop collecting information on Australians and to delete existing face templates and data collected from Australia.

    2 replies 31 retweets 72 likes
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  8. Nov 2

    This same Facebook exec told his employees in February that the company was considering the possibility of putting facial recognition in its smart glasses product. That was not a public discussion.

    1 reply 5 retweets 31 likes
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  9. Nov 2

    But the public had no say in Facebook’s decision to stop using facial recognition on its social network. It may have been informed by public criticism, but it was a unilateral move made by a corporate entity.

    This is a very important decision. We must continue having a public discussion about the societal implications of this technology.
    2 replies 20 retweets 142 likes
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  10. Retweeted
    Nov 2

    That’s wild, to me

    5 replies 120 retweets 572 likes
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  11. Nov 2

    Let 👏🏼 cats 👏🏼 vote 👏🏼

    3 replies 1 retweet 38 likes
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  12. Nov 2

    this was so interesting and shows how tech can be used to uncover people's unconscious biases

    70% of sports fans who watched a clip from a World Cup broadcast said Senegal was the more “athletic” team. 62% who watched the same passage rendered as stick figures with no visible race said Poland was. I wrote about it for :
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  13. Retweeted
    Nov 2

    FB is making this seem like a decision purely about ethics, when I suspect it simply wasn't that useful anymore? In 2010 people used to upload big albums of photos from a party with tons of faces; people just don't do that now

    16 replies 91 retweets 469 likes
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  14. Nov 2

    It'll be interesting to see what Meta/FB does w/ companies like Clearview Ai and Pimeyes that have built out their facial recognition tools by scraping FB and Instagram. Meta/FB already sent Clearview a cease and desist for scraping, but has yet to file any lawsuit.

    3 replies 5 retweets 19 likes
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  15. Nov 2

    Anyone reading today's move should be aware that Meta, Facebook, watever is reserving the right to deploy facial recognition on future products. Its future CTO discussed the possibility of using it in smart glasses in an internal meeting earlier this year.

    But this is a 'gone, for now' situation. As my partner on this story, , reported just months ago, Facebook has discussed the "pros and cons" of putting facial recognition capabilities into its smart glasses.
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    3 replies 39 retweets 56 likes
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  16. Retweeted
    Nov 2

    My jaw dropped to the floor when I got this news. Facebook is shutting down the facial recognition system that it introduced more than 10 years ago and deleting the faceprints of 1 billion people:

    400 replies 1,903 retweets 6,586 likes
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  17. Nov 2

    Facebook is ending its decade-long facial recognition feature (for now) and deleting the face scan data of one billion users. Story w/

    16 replies 48 retweets 109 likes
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  18. Nov 2

    wut did they do

    13 replies 13 retweets 147 likes
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  19. Nov 2

    i love how this phrase became uncool within like 12 hours of the general public being aware of it

    47 replies 211 retweets 1,501 likes
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  20. Nov 2

    chaser

    Did a double and triple take here: Atlantic’s site running sponcon from Facebook featuring Facebook execs interviewed by real reporters (, ).
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  21. Nov 1

    I understand NFTs now

    I have written and deleted like five NFT Mario tweets as nothing compares to the passage itself
    2 replies 17 likes
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