Facebook patented emotion-detection software that images can classify into many feeling states

Evidence

In a pattern that is by now all too familiar, safeguards lagged as surveillance capitalism flourished. By early 2014, Facebook had already applied for an “emotion detection” patent designed to implement each of Picard’s fears. The idea was “one or more software modules capable of detecting emotions, expressions or other characteristic of a user from image information.” As always, the company was ambitious. Its list of detectable emotions “by way of example and not limitation” included expressions such as “a smile, joy, humor, amazement, excitement, surprise, a frown, sadness, disappointment, confusion, jealousy, indifference, boredom, anger, depression, or pain.” — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 893

Categorization

• XREF: Concrete instance of behavioral surplus getting repurposed via prediction imperative, directly feeding this book’s core causal account of how intention becomes dispossession. — connects to: The European Commission publicly funded emotion-reading technology for advertising — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 878; Emotion recognition reduces feelings to pattern-recognition problems for computers. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 889; Emotion-detecting chips claim to classify twelve emotions across 64 trillion states — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 900 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Emotion-detecting chips claim to classify twelve emotions across 64 trillion states #corroborates (0.85) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 900
• Affective computing treats unconscious emotions as measurable behavioral signals. #expands (0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 888
• Market segmentation industrialized recognition and empathy as tools of attention capture #expands (0.75) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 612