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BENEATH THE FILTERED FACADE
Part 2
Filters can be easy and fun to use, but what's beneath all those layers of technology?
Filters often use a technology called the Viola-Jones object detection framework. This system analyzes hundreds of features within a face using Haar Features that help to spatialize where things like eyes or lips on a face are located. When someone faces the camera towards a face, the face is then translated into grayscale and the Haar Features are applied.
As Kavya Nambiar (2022) explains, using 3D mapping, and with the help of previously loaded and tested facial data, Active Shape Models can mark points on a face that form to each unique face a filter an individual may encounter.
From there, Augmented Reality, meaning a distortion of the real life occurring around you, is overlaid over the live video feed as you interact with the filter being displayed on your face. This is done by adding digital elements (be it sounds or visuals to stimulate your mind into feeling it is somewhere else), which is then overlaid over the live video feed as you interact with the filter being displayed on your face.
Example of the technology causing harm: TikTok "Glow Look" Filter
In 2021, there was a popular trend on TikTok with a filter entitled "Glow Look." As Mashable tech reporter Jennimai Nguyen (2021) describes, this filter was made to give the individual using the filter "enlarged, bright blue eyes, flushed cheeks, and noticeably thinner nose." Upon scrolling through her TikTok feed, Nguyen found that most of the people on her feed using this filter were white women. Himani Jadeja, a TikTok creator whose content focuses on Desi lifestyle and culture, commented on her frustration with beauty filters such as these saying, "It's so damaging to those who don't conform to those beauty standards. There's other ethnicities and other cultures who have their own form of beauty. And we just, I guess, don't match up to those standards."
TikTokker Whitney Hanson with and without the "Glow Look" filter (Nguyen, 2021)
Author of the article, Jennimai Nguyen who is Vietnamese
Behind the layers of technological makeup, there are decades of discrimination and the laying of a foundation for white supremacy that continues to be cemented within society. In the following sections you will explore the history that feeds into the standards these filters promote and uphold, as well as how these standards have become destructive to our society as a whole.
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