PreShow is developing an app to earn you free movie tickets -- to any film in any theater -- if you watch 15 to 20 minutes of high-end advertising.
Accept crap being dumped into your brain for the right to watch a movie (which often means more crap). But how are they going to accomplish this?
Forgoing a password, PreShow's app will only unlock with your phone's facial recognition technology. And while you're watching the ads to earn that free ticket, your phone's camera monitors your level of attention. Walk away or even obscure part of your face? The ad will pause after five seconds.
Watch out, we're entering a new era of unavoidable ads. Forget about stupid movies - soon the entire Internet could be in on this. Just like sites don't work without JavaScript these days, you will have sites not working without facial recognition technology enabled.
So long as the front-facing camera can recognize that your face is looking at the screen, the border stays green. Walk away, direct your head away from the camera or even obscure part of your face, and the outline turns to red in the demo. After five seconds of red, the commercial automatically pauses.
No more walking away while the ad is playing.
The app [...] won't be sharing personally identifiable data to third parties. For its advertising partners, it will provide aggregated and anonymized data
AKA the excuse of all disgusting trackers, such as Mozilla.
Anyway, let's think about the deeper implications. We're slowly entering a world where you pay for stuff with your privacy and dignity. What else could this technology be used for? I can just imagine ensuring that children view state / business sponsored propaganda in schools, for example. The possibilities are endless, and all lead to Technological slavery.
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