Makes it less obvious now they are indeed tracking you.
About a billion faces are saved everyday for Facebook apparently for authentication purposes (though there might be other hidden purposes than that, such as data selling). In a shocking turn of events, Facebook boldly removes its face recognition feature, which is really unlikely for them to do.
With the face recognition now turned off, Facebook will be deleting more than a billion saved face templates all across their platforms. A few things are going to happen once Facebook completely ends their face recognition system.
- Faces in memories, photos or videos will no longer be recognised automatically.
- Users can no longer enable face recognition in photos and suggested tagging will be turned off. Manual tagging is still around however
- Automatic Alt Text (AAT), a tool that is created for the blind to help them recognise images, will no longer include names of people in their photos, videos or memories
- Users who have enabled facial recognition will automatically be disabled and the template used by the system will be deleted.
The reason for this shocking move because Facebook facial recognition “need to be weighed against growing concerns about the use of this technology as a whole.” “Its long-term role in society needs to be debated in the open, and among those who will be most impacted by it. We will continue engaging in that conversation and working with the civil society groups and regulators who are leading this discussion.” the company added.
While helpful, there are growing concerns it could be used in nefarious purposes such as tracking and stalking as well as invade the user’s privacy.
This change will become effective “in the coming weeks”.
Source: Facebook