Facebook Takes A Step Back With Facial Recognition System

Meta, what was previously known as Facebook, has made some changes to its systems and linked its procedures directly towards moving a step back in terms of the Facial Recognition Systems. In a recent release report, they indicated that they would be ending and shutting down Facebook’s facial recognition systems in their entirety. This would be furthered over to the point that the Facebook team would have to delete about a billion templates that it collected over time since the start of Facebook’s facial recognition collections.

Furthermore, there will be no Alt Texts spreading around the page or the entire platform as the names for people being recognized are stopped as well along with the Facebook Facial Recognition System. This came in face of problems faced by the company and the board about the limitations of the system and how severely it could be extrapolated for malicious activities by scammers and worked on to further harm with identity theft by frauds.

The Board decided that the cons generated from the system in the long run at this point in time are more harmful and the pros do not outweigh them at any point in time. The decision, even though detrimental to the progression of facial recognition technology comes at the right point before this widely used and acclaimed technology could be misused and abused to the point of return. The requirement of certain devices to share the data of Facial recognition with third parties and the threat of them being destroyed in transition is all the more real and something that could escalate the already shocking numbers of identity theft across the globe.

Apart from the financial threats to the victims, companies like Facebook itself had faced severe backlash in terms of the abuse of the Facial recognition facilities as the recent settlement that was reached totaled to around $650 million for just a single case and that number could just keep piling up. The pressure was further built up by the governments of several countries and state legislators calling for a ban on the system. The ban although, ranged from a partial ban to a complete ban was dependent on the state.

However, as opposed to Meta being alone across the journey, the likes of Amazon and Google have joined in as they have refused the police use of their system and haven’t sold their data tech for a long time respectively.


Read next: Facebook creates waves in the robotic industry with a wide range of touch sensing technology
Previous Post Next Post