Facial recognition has arrived at Facebook. Through an official statement, Mark Zuckerberg's social network specified that this technology will be available to all its users, only if they choose to activate it. Additionally, the "tagging suggestions" feature will no longer exist on the platform.
Facial recognition, which is part of the technological development of this social network, has been available to some users since December 2017. It notifies a person if their profile picture is being used by another user or if their face appears in photos where they were not tagged. "Starting today, people who recently join Facebook or previously had the tagging suggestions setting will have the facial recognition setting and will receive information on how it works. The tagging suggestions setting, which only controls whether we can suggest that your friends tag you in photos or videos using facial recognition, will no longer be available," stated Facebook's news site. Facebook apparently decided to make these modifications to tagging suggestions and facial recognition after receiving a lawsuit regarding privacy violation.
An Illinois user filed the lawsuit against Facebook in 2015. Basically, the plaintiff accused this social network of violating the state's law on biometric information privacy, stating that it obtained valuable data from millions of users illegally and without their consent. Facebook suffered a major setback last month when a federal appeals court rejected its efforts to remove the class action designation from the lawsuit. "We have always disclosed our use of facial recognition technology and people can enable or disable it at any time," the company said last month. On its news site, Facebook claims it continues to talk with privacy experts, academics, regulators, and its users regarding topics such as facial recognition usage and the options that people have to control it.