Kashmir HillAfter the report about the Girl Scout mom getting booted from Radio City Music Hall, I spent the last two days reporting out the use of facial recognition technology by the Madison Square Garden empire to keep hundreds of lawyers that work for firms that have sued it from attending concerts, sporting events and shows. It is a radical use of the technology by a private company and I am truly shocked by how forthright MSG is about its real-world block list. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/22/nyregion/madison-square-garden-facial-recognition.html
One thing that struck me about Madison Square Garden using facial recognition technology to boot lawyers out is that it's been happening for months and the lawyers didn't realize exactly how novel it was to have their faces on a watchlist. People are sometimes on the cutting edge of something but they don't realize it because they already thought the world was that far down the path.
msgbi
Jakob von Lindern@kashhill I think about this phenomenon a lot because I believe one reason for it is that tech reporting (my own included of course) has too often mixed what is and what would could be. As important as it is to write about how technologies could impact the world, I think it's important to make clear where a technology stands in a given moment. I try to put more thought into making that distinction in my reporting.
Pinkfatrabbit@kashhill I find it fascinating, how naive people have been, when they have given tons of personal data (photos of faces) to tech companies over the last 15 years. And now they realize it was a stupid idea!