Facebook Plans to Shut Down Facial Recognitin Program

Facebook, who now goes by the name Meta, announced on Tuesday that the company is putting a stop to its face recognition system.

Meta said it will delete more than 1 billion people’s individual facial recognition templates as a result of this change and services that rely on the face recognition systems will be removed over the coming weeks.

The company said in a blog post that more than a third of Facebook’s daily active users, or over 600 million accounts, had opted into the use of the 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,” Meta said.

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

It was last week that Meta announced its road map to creating a massive virtual world. The company said it will still consider facial recognition technology for instances where people need to verify their identity or to prevent fraud and impersonation.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, “From now on, we’re going to be metaverse first, not Facebook first. That means that over time, you won’t need to use Facebook to use our other services as our new brand starts showing up in our products. I hope that people come to know the Meta brand and the future that we stand for.”

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

Disclaimer: We have no position in any of the companies mentioned and have not been compensated for this article.