Invisible Friends
Missing Persons Advocacy Network MPAN
Issue 47 | June 2018
Agency
whiteGREY Australia
Creative Team
Executive Creative Director Anthony Moss Writer Nic Molyneux Art Director Benjamin Mann
Production Team
Digital Producer Matt Knight, Michelle McGrath, Alex Botterill Digital Designer Lauren Bowen Developer Yohan Mocho, Mathieu Mence Editor Leigh Cooke
Other Credits
Managing Director Claudia McInerney Account Director Amy Ross Account Manager Holly Ryan, Harriet Lade
Date
May 2018
Background
The Missing Persons Advocacy Network (MPAN) was founded by Loren O’Keeffe after her brother went missing.
To raise awareness of the 35,000 people who go missing in Australia every year and to provide practical support to their families and friends.
Recognising that social media has always been a powerful tool to spread a message fast, the organisation saw an opportunity for even greater reach through Facebook’s new facial recognition technology.
Idea
Invisible Friends featured a selection of Facebook profiles of people who had gone missing.
Facebook users around the world were invited to become Facebook friends with these missing persons. The more friends these missing people could acquire the better, because Facebook’s recognition technology got to scan the backgrounds of each video and photo published by the friends of the Invisible Friends.
With around 500 million photos and videos posted to Facebook every day, if even one of the faces matched that of a missing person, the Facebook algorithm would then auto-tag the profile and notify MPAN. Artificial intelligence was put to work for a good cause and carry out a task humans simply wouldn’t be able to manage.
With facial recognition technology operating at an accuracy of 98%, which was 13% more accurate than the facial recognition technology employed by the FBI, Facebook claimed that there were now only 2.5 degrees of separation between every person on the planet.
While there were some obvious privacy concerns for those that didn’t want to be found, only profiles were created where an active police report existed and where strict criteria were met.
Results
Still too early.
Our Thoughts
We live in a world of paradox. All the things about social media that alarm us most, how we can be tracked as we move online and how we can be identified by image recognition technology, are also things that can be of real value.
All the ways that Facebook exploits your data are also the ways it can serve you.
The real question is what do you have to hide? If the answer is nothing, then Facebook can be a friend, as it is to hundreds of thousands of Australians worried about a friend or family member who has suddenly disappeared.
In many ways, this idea doesn’t just serve MPAN and the rather amazing young woman who set it up, Loren O’Keeffe, it’s doing Mark Zuckerberg a power of good too.