I have a question in mind I have been wanting to ask for a good while now,I think it’s high time I tried my luck at it and see what response I get.
I constantly check on the maps to see the latest photos of places and things on the maps especially in my own locality. Now I click on explore and for map user who understand where and what I mean that quickly brings me what different local guides in the area are posting,especially the featured ones. Now I wonder am I wrong to say it’s the Algorithm who does the featuring. Having said that my question;
Does the Algorithm automatically recognise selfies, people faces,people posing etc on the maps??? We know it does detect quickly and easily other photos not well lit up, blurry, dark etc and they are marked private most of us local guides have that, but these other ones. The amount of them I see everytime is enormous. Now as local guides we try to flag and report etc and most times it’s not approved. I have done a bit of that this morning. I’ll attach one example of what I found this morning.
The one photo you shared is most likely not one that you took, and I bet you don’t have consent from the models! So I believe you just violated the copyright guidelines And you shared the name of who uploaded it.
I too see huge amounts of selfies and group photos. And I loyally flag them as privacy infringements. That said, I do believe the AI can detect such photos. If you look at the number of views such photos get, I find they get relatively very few views. So I believe the photo filter is not only here to hide photos but also to decide which photos are selected to be shown.
But I certainly agree with you that automatic hiding would be nice. But maybe we only see a fraction of all the selfies and group photos uploaded to Google Maps. The filter might have hidden the majority. And I usually only see such photos when I actively select to see all photos uploaded to a place.
Over time, I think flagging such photos has become more effective but it is still not perfect (or there is a long delay before action is taken).
Finally, please note that we do not get notifications related to the flagging of photos.
Very good I’ll block out the name seeing you pointed it out, thank you. I expected your response alright . The copyright of the photo,don’t know about that. Thanks for response.
Thanks for highlighting this subject, @SholaIB , I will give you a more detailed reply later as I started to report this issue directly to Google years ago (Local Guides Summit '17) and I am constantly studying the issue. I wrote several posts about that, and I strongly believe that the algorithm should be improved.
Regarding copyright issues, every of our photo is copyrighted by default, as you can read on the bottom of every photo just tapping in the photo
That will be very good @ErmesT I knew you’ll certainly see the post. I was also hoping @JanVanHaver will see it but I’ve tagged him now sorry. Look forward to the detailed reply and of course some action from the Google team.
as a map user seeing faces instead of places is not nice !!!
@SholaIB I saw your post earlier today already, but was not in the possibility to reply at that time
Technically, I’m quite sure that Google has the AI-capability to recognize those kind of pictures - should they feel the need and the urgency to do this. Reading the guidelines those are indeed ‘violations’ but no real damage/harm is done by such selfies and group photos, which are in almost all cases posted on Maps by lach of knowledge of those guidelines, not in a conscious attempt to gain money/advantages in some or other way.
Judging by the scarce info that Google does provide (like this recent blogpost about reviews), I think that their focus is more on the conscious attempts to violate the rules, not on the accidental and harmless ones. And although those pics might briefly show up in the explore tab (because that focuses heavily on newly added content), my experience is also that such pics quickly sink to the bottom and consequently do not get a lot of views (= are not shown to a lot of Maps users).
I should have known but anyway just thought to tag you. Thank you for the elaborate reply.
Hopefully Google can feel an urgency to do this(program the Al to recognise and immediately mark private)and reduce further the amount of these rule violating photos and profiles. Agreed that they quickly sink down to the bottom,but then others keep on posting such and there is no end to the circle of them,but if it’s quickly recognised and taken down it shouldn’t and may not get the chance to be featured.
That said,we hope that some of us local guides that make some little little mistake as regards photos can be spared then seeing it’s not a conscious attempt to violate the rules.That will save is the stress of being banned etc Still looking forward to more response from others who.might be knowledgeable or interested in this.
This one has been up in the last one month. Flagging the photos is no small job,yet I don’t think I have made a huge success at it. Can we escalate this beyond just writing a post here on connect. I see many more others in my area. For instance the one I used for the cover page of this post I think is still public !!! What do you think? Maybe I should tag @JanVanHaver as well.
I don’t think something is changed in the last month, @SholaIB , and the algorithm seems to focus more on Spam (logos and so on) than on privacy).
I agree with @JanVanHaver that Google has the capability to recognise face’s (privacy and selfies) but probably is avoiding to implement an algorithm for the specific subject. The reason can be that, while it is difficult to detect a face, deciding if that face is legitimate or not seems to be a bit more complicated. I’ve seen several selfies that are not against the rules, and a photographer was a few years ago about his artistic way to contribute in maps.
I see that’s interesting. Well @ErmesT I will have to agree with you then.
I wouldn’t mind if it’s only public,but being featured is another story entirely and it generates views and like comments. Will it be okay to let them be or still flag it?
That’s a new thing I am learning there now,that some selfies are not a violation. I’ll say no more on this then. Wish local guides can help to train the AI to recognise clear faces on the maps somehow. LOL maybe we can’t. Just thought to mention it to you and see what you will say. Thank you
I am not seeing that selfies are not a violation, @SholaIB , I’m seeing that also a selfie can be ok if the photo is representing the place in an appropriate way, e.g. myself holding a burger, where the burger is clearly on focus and the location is selling burgers.
Most of the selfies in maps are deeply violating the rules.
And you shared the name of who uploaded it.
. The copyright of the photo,don’t know about that. Thanks for response.
