Facebook To Stop Default Facial Recognition On Photos

Just this Tuesday, Facebook has announced that they will stop default facial recognition on your tagging suggestions and photos.

New Settings

In a recent announcement, the company said that all new users and users who currently have tag suggestion option on would get a notification about facial recognition technology, and the transparency on the way the company is using this technology. Starting from this Tuesday, users can easily turn on or off these settings.

Those with facial recognition setting off will not show up in Photo Review or suggested tags.

Applied Research Lead of Facebook AI, Srinivas Narayanan commented on this matter in the announcement. He said that this new setting would allow users to manage the usage of facial recognition technology. Now, the users could control whether or not Facebook will suggest tags. This is an effort of the social giant to protect your personal identity on the platform.

A Huge Penalty From FTC

This new update comes shortly after the five billion dollars penalty from the FTC in July. This fine was partially due to the facial recognition technology. The FTC said that Facebook had misrepresented the ability of users to manage how facial recognition was used on their photos.

Apart from that colossal penalty, the FTC also ordered the company to provide its users with a conspicuous and clear notice on the usage of facial recognition feature. The company must also get affirmative confirmation from the users when it wants to use any material that exceeds the prior disclosures.

They are working on it

Narayanan said that Facebook would continue to work with privacy academics, regulators, and experts about their usage of face recognition. Still, the facial recognition technology of Facebook doesn't recognize you to strangers.  Narayanan stressed that they do not share its users' data with 3rd parties. They do not sell their technology either.