Facebook to no longer use facial recognition systems

• Facebook will delete more than 1 billion facial recognition templates

• More than a third of Facebook’s daily active users use face recognition technology

Facebook announced on Tuesday it will no longer use its facial recognition system amid mounting pressure from regulators and users.

The social media giant said it will delete more than 1 billion facial recognition templates of users due to this change.

In a blog post, Facebook said more than a third of the platform’s daily active users, which is over 600 million accounts, are using face recognition technology.

“There are many concerns about the place of facial recognition technology in society, and regulators are still in the process of providing a clear set of rules governing its use,” the company said. 

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“Amid this ongoing uncertainty, we believe that limiting the use of facial recognition to a narrow set of use cases is appropriate.”

The post said that Facebook will no longer automatically recognize people’s faces in photos or videos. Facebook’s services working on face recognition systems will be not working over the coming weeks.

Fraud cases

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, said it will still consider facial recognition technology in cases of fraud or to verify people’s identity in certain cases.

For future uses of facial recognition technology, Meta will “continue to be public about intended use, how people can have control over these systems and their personal data.”

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The end of using facial recognition systems comes amid whistleblower Frances Haugen’s claims of company’s negligence towards its users’ safety.

Haugen released internal company documents which showed that Facebook was aware of the harm caused to teenagers’ mental health due to Instagram but chose not to address them.

Picture Credits: Getty Images