The Meta company that manages Facebook is moving further away from facial recognition that raises so many complaints. They have announced that they will shut down the facial recognition system on Facebook over the next few weeks.
With its closure, you will no longer be automatically recognized in the photos if you opted for the function, and the Facebook team will eliminate more than one billion facial recognition templates that it has registered. Automatic alt text descriptions for the visually impaired will also stop naming people detected in photos.
Facial recognition no longer has a place on Facebook
The company said it took the decision after concerns about the broader uses of facial recognition rose. Among those concerns is the uncertainty about its regulation and its reliability as an impartial and effective body. While Meta believed that facial recognition could still be useful in some situations, such as gaining access to a locked account, it found that a narrower, more privacy-oriented approach was a better fit. While on-device recognition would not require data sharing with external servers, for example, they did not compensate for other privacy concerns.
There was already significant pressure to shut down the Facebook facial recognition system. Meta settled a $ 650 million facial recognition privacy lawsuit last year, and they likely won't want any more cases. Several governments have passed or are seriously considering at least partial bans on the use of facial recognition technology. While making it clear that you accept that Facebook uses facial recognition technology in your photos, it does not explicitly violate laws, it does not mean that many people do not like them and do not trust them.
Amazon now has an indefinite ban on police use of its Rekognition platform, and Google has refused to sell facial recognition technology since 2018. So Meta is not the only company to abandon facial recognition.
Source: Engadget
