Facebook has face recognition technology in place for the convenience of its users.
The social juggernaut has what it calls 'tag suggestions', which can automatically suggest tags of users' friends in photos. In 2017, Facebook introduced a feature to help users control how Facebook uses this technology to recognize them in photos and suggest tags, as well as providing them an easy on and off switch for a broader set of uses of face recognition, such as helping users protect their identity on Facebook.
But not all users managed to have this feature. This is why, according to Facebook in a Newsroom post:
In other words, the company said that it is rolling out this facial recognition settings to everyone, and that it’d be turned off by default for new users. And those who don’t already have this setting will be notified and asked if they want to turn it on.
"The notice will include information about the new features and options to learn more about how we use face recognition, along with a button to turn it on or keep it off," said Facebook.
And if users do have the face recognition setting and do nothing, Facebook won't use its face recognition technology, and also won't suggest tags to them.
In addition to that, features like Photo Review, which lets users know when they appear in photos even if they're not tagged, as long as they have permission to see the post based on its privacy setting, won't be activated.
Others however, can still manually tag friends, but Facebook won’t anymore suggest them to be tagged if the users have face recognition turned off.
Facebook has experienced numerous criticisms and complaints from the governments, its own users and also from privacy advocates, who dislike how the social giant gather, process and share users' information.
Having a class action lawsuit over its allegedly illegal storage of the biometric data of millions of users without their consent, Facebook is also losing to a federal appeal that would have stopped the lawsuit. This could drain the company by billions of dollars if its not careful.
This is why Facebook is playing it safe.
"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," said Facebook
"We’ve made the steps to update your settings clearer and you can opt to leave your setting off right in the notice, as opposed to having to go to a separate screen. If you do nothing, face recognition will remain off for you."
Facebook is also offering users an opportunity to review information about its technology and the features it has, so they can lean more about them, and make the decision that’s right for them.
And for its final words, Facebook said that it's face recognition technology still and won't recognize users to strangers, or people they are friends with. Also, "We don’t share your face recognition information with third parties. We also don’t sell our technology," said Facebook.