ALERT SUMMARY
Facebook – now Meta - will stop using their Face Recognition system on their Facebook.com website even for people who have said they wanted their face automatically recognized in photos and videos. Meta will even go as far as deleting the information used to identify these people. That’s about a 33% of all users so it is a bold move by Meta.
The upside is a win for the privacy of people looking to use Facebook who don’t want to be recognized by every person and company around the world. The downside is for those with impaired vision who now won’t hear the names of people in their use of Facebook.com. But does this technology need to be removed from the visually impaired? Could the friends and family surrounding these people opt-in to a limited scope of this technology?
The other downside of closing this technology down is the ability for Facebook users to be automatically notified if their picture appears somewhere on Facebook.com. Certainly that does help knowing who’s taking pictures of you and posting them, yet with the number of public cameras and other facial recognition products in other social media sites, it is inconsequential. People using Facebook.com can still tag others manually.
One new avenue Meta will begin looking at is using this technology for identification as Apple has with it’s face id that unlocks the iphone. Keeping face recognition technology limited in scope and without mandating it’s use is a reasonable approach.
There are a lot of other apps using facial recognition and scanning the internet for pictures and videos of people effectively tracking and collecting information about individuals with possible malicious intent.
Meta is looking to re-imagine facial recognition technology “…with privacy, transparency and control in place, so you decide if and how your face is used.”
Now, that’s a definite upside with Meta providing the solution.
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