Facebook is notifying more users about facial recognition, which it says refers to feature announced last December that scans photos for faces of untagged users
Russell Brandom / The Verge :
Context & Ripple Effects
This notification wave is the rollout catching up with the announcement: Facebook introduced the untagged-photo alert feature in December 2017, and this notice expands how many users are told it exists and that their photos are being scanned. The feature flips tagging from user action to platform inference — Facebook matches faces in new uploads against its templates whether or not anyone tags them.
First-order effects
- More Facebook users are now informed — after the fact — that face scanning covers their untagged photos, shifting the burden onto individuals to find and adjust the setting rather than having opted in.
Second-order effects
- Notify-after-deploy becomes a recurring optics problem for Facebook: by 2019 the company had to flip the default so new users aren't identified automatically via a Face Recognition setting, a direct concession to the consent gap this kind of rollout created.
Third-order effects
- The arc from silent expansion to default-off to Meta's 2021 shutdown of the system and deletion of over a billion users' face scans shows default-on biometric identification becoming legally and reputationally untenable on consumer social platforms.
The trend: Consumer platforms are retreating from default-on facial recognition as regulators and users force consent-first handling of biometric data.