Member-only story
Facebook Is Putting Us All on the Map
Whether we like it or not
2019 has been a distinctly dramatic year for Facebook. Since January, the social media behemoth has been hit with a $5 billion fine for privacy violations and remains embroiled in U.S. antitrust investigations. In June, the company announced the release of Libra, its very own form of cryptocurrency, sparking criticism and speculation around the world.
Amidst all this hubbub, you may have missed that Facebook has also begun using artificial intelligence to map most of the population of the African continent. Facebook researchers combined computer vision techniques, population data, and high-resolution satellite imagery to search for built-up structures across the continent. They then created population density maps based on the number of buildings they observed.
Facebook’s Connectivity Lab has already released similar population maps for 22 countries, including Malawi, South Africa, Ghana, Haiti, and Sri Lanka, but this is its first continent-wide effort. Eventually the company plans to map population density around the world.
Facebook positions its map-making as a humanitarian effort emphasizing how the data (which is freely available to everyone) will enable aid agencies to “determine how populations are distributed even in remote areas, so that health care…
