Facebook announced on Tuesday that it has disabled its facial recognition system and deleted facial recognition data for one billion users in response to privacy concerns. The announcement from the social media giant comes at a time when the company is facing one of its worst crises ever, following the leak of internal documents to reporters, lawmakers, and US regulators.
The parent company, Meta, stated, "There are a lot of concerns about the role of facial recognition technology in society, and regulators are still working on providing a clear set of rules governing its use." The company added, "We believe that in light of the ongoing uncertainty regarding the service, it is appropriate to limit the use of facial recognition to a narrow set of use cases."
The statement indicated that the closure of this system "will result in the deletion of over one billion individual facial recognition templates." The announcement did not specify when the changes would take effect, but if enacted, users would widely feel its impact, as more than a third of Facebook users utilize the service daily. Earlier, the parent company changed its name to "Meta" in an effort to move beyond being a scandal-ridden social network to its vision of a virtual reality future.
