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this is panopticon shit. i guarantee you that head and eye tracking shit is automated and bullshit, too https://twitter.com/LegendAriee16/status/1304098649186742273
if eye tracking was cheap enough to do well in something like an online class, we'd be making enormous strides in usability development
i just checked to see if this has changed since i was doing usability work and yeah eye tracking that's good enough for usability work requires individual calibration. there's no way they're getting it from automatic analysis from various webcams
even if there's pretty different stuff needed for this kind of anti-cheat eyetracking and usability data, there's no way the results are accurate enough to justify sending that kind of scolding email, let alone failing students and accusing them of cheating over it
this is also a good example of why all surveillance-based algorithms are harmful. you give teachers data like this and they'll turn into fucking cops, even when the data is inaccurate. they get confidence because a computer spat a number out at them
every system that is supposed to do facial recognition is like this too. "we arrested you because the computer said you has an 85% match with a terrorist" that kind of bullshit
people treat computers like magic fucking oracles when it gives them a reason to wield authoritarian power over others. even when the computers are wrong. sometimes the computers being wrong is even preferable, because they can pick and choose what they react to
it's the digital version of police dogs who are trained to alert to their handlers and so who "detect drugs" any time their cop handler gets scared of a Black person, giving an excuse to enact violence on them
anyway this is why you can't just dismiss facial recognition based on it not working very well. it doesn't have to work well for people to use it as an excuse to do harm
because even fucking webcam anti-cheating software gets turned into a magic talisman used to arbitrarily threaten the future of a bunch of students by a shitty teacher on a power trip
