In its Tuesday blog post, under a section titled “Privacy Matters,” Facebook noted: “We’ve continued to engage with privacy experts, academics, regulators and people on Facebook about how we use face recognition and the options you have to control it.” How Facebook is notifying users of the choice to opt in to facial recognition Facebook The $5 billion settlement Facebook reached with the FTC in July requires the company to be clearer on its use of that technology. In fact, one of the Federal Trade Commission’s recent accusations against Facebook was that the company misled users years ago by not properly explaining its use of facial recognition. The company has been embroiled in a series of privacy scandals - of which Cambridge Analytica is only the most glaring - and the last thing it needs is more accusations that it’s failing to take users’ privacy seriously. Or the traveler who complained via Twitter that JetBlue had checked her into her flight using facial recognition without her consent.Īgainst this backdrop, it’s no wonder Facebook is doing all it can to be (or at least appear to be) more judicious about its use of the controversial technology. Take, for example, the black tenants in Brooklyn who objected to their landlord’s plan to install the tech in their rent-stabilized building. Elizabeth Warren said she’d create a task force to “establish guardrails and appropriate privacy protections” for surveillance tech, including facial recognition.Īnd as the tech pops up everywhere from our apartment buildings to our airports, it’s increasingly sparking controversy among citizens. Bernie Sanders called for a total nationwide ban on the use of facial recognition software for policing. Last month, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Some cities, like San Francisco, Oakland, and Somerville, have already instituted local bans on it. Behemoth companies like Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft are all mired in controversy over the tech. The technology now plays a role in policing and surveillance, and AI experts point to evidence showing that it can disproportionately harm people of color. That was, for many of us, the first introduction to facial recognition, and we barely gave the convenient tech a second thought.įast forward to 2019, and the headlines are saturated with people lambasting its ill effects. It’s a sign of the company’s increasing awareness that it needs to project a more privacy-conscious image - and of the public’s increasing wariness toward facial recognition technology, which can identify an individual by analyzing their facial features in images, in videos, or in real time.įacebook popularized facial recognition years ago in a context that seemed totally innocent: It tagged our friends’ faces for us in photos we’d posted to the social media network. It’ll be off by default for all new users, and for current users who do nothing when they receive an upcoming notice about the change, Facebook announced in a Tuesday blog post. From now on, if you want that feature to be part of your social media experience, you’ll have to opt to turn it on.
Facebook is changing how it uses facial recognition technology - the feature on the platform that allows faces to be tagged in photos.
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