Facebook introduces changes to its facial recognition settings

Facebook has announced changes to its face recognition tools, giving users more control. First of all, the social media platform is disabling the face recognition setting that automatically suggested tags of users’ friends in photos. The setting allowed a user to control whether Facebook could suggest that a user’s friend tag them in photos or videos using facial recognition. Instead, Facebook is expanding a setting which was initially introduced to a limited number of users in December 2017. The broader setting, simply called face recognition, allows users to control how Facebook uses FRT to identify them in photos or videos. For example, the tool enables user control on whether Facebook can use FRT on their photo to suggest tags, and it also provides an on or off switch for several other uses of FRT (such as notifying a user when someone else uses their face in profile pictures). New Facebook users and users who had the tag suggestions setting enabled will have the new face recognition setting, will receive information about how it works, and will be able to turn it on or keep it off. If the face recognition setting is not enabled, Facebook will not use FRT to recognise the user or suggest tags. The company further clarifies that ‘people will still be able to manually tag friends, but we won’t suggest you to be tagged if you do not have face recognition turned on’. Facebook also points out that its FRT does not recognise users to strangers and that face recognition information is not shared with third parties.