Facebook Face-Recognition Tool Under Fire

by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer, June 8, 2011

Guess we were wrong to assume that Facebook had grown too powerful for privacy-related criticism. No, the social giant is now being forced to apologize for the way it rolled out its face-recognition system. "A group of privacy watchdogs drawn from the EU's 27 nations will study the measure for possible rules violations," Bloomberg reports.

"Tags of people on pictures should only happen based on people's prior consent and it can't be activated by default," the group tells Bloomberg, before promising to "clarify to Facebook that this can't happen like this."

In case you didn't now, "Facebook has quietly expanded the availability of technology to automatically identify people in photos," writes Reuters -- thus, "renewing concerns about the privacy practices of the world's top social networking service."

Now, "The social network said that it should have done more to notify members about the global launch," BBC News writes. Along with apologizing, however, a Facebook spokesperson justified its technology to BBC News, saying that there had been "misconceptions" about what it does.

"Facebook must have been tripping if it thought it could enable automatic photo face-tagging without also automatically tripping the interest of European privacy regulators," writes paidContent.

Under the headline, "Europe belatedly freaks out about Facebook facial recognition feature," Gawker writes: "You remember when Facebook rolled out its creepy facial recognition technology last December in the U.S. ... Now it's available worldwide. Let's point and laugh as Europe freaks out about the same thing we did six months ago."

Along with privacy watchdogs, however, "Facebook users are expressing concern for its new facial recognition technology," DailyTech writes. "The new facial recognition technology, which was announced in December but only introduced to a small test group, is basically Facebook's way of creating a huge, photo-searchable database of its users," PCWorld notes. "And yes, it's terrifying."

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5 comments about "Facebook Face-Recognition Tool Under Fire".

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Douglas Ferguson from College of Charleston, June 8, 2011 at 1:14 p.m.
Who elected these watchdogs? Self-anointment does not count, except perhaps to other unelected wacthdogs. Let the consumer beware. Caveat emptor. That's the way people lived before the nannies arrived.
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Howie Goldfarb from Blue Star Strategic Marketing, June 8, 2011 at 2:21 p.m.

Zuckerturd and Sanberg are weasel slimebags and I think they should go to jail. Facebook is dying anyway. They are not too big. Traffic is down over the last year and people not only don't trust upper management they are serious scumbags in my humble opinion. They sold their soul for cash and soon will be out of work when their IPO crashes all around them. US uniques are flat for over a year now. And only 20-30mil US consumers use the site every day. Which is a different story than Facebook and Mashable and the Gurus tell. Compete has the proof and I just blogged about it today.

Shiromasa Yamamoto from onlymeworld, llc, June 8, 2011 at 3:50 p.m.

Don't you think it's funny our government can't even obtain this kind of information about it's citizens without a court order, but facebook and other social networking site have been given the latitude? Why not, for the government it'll be like going to the library and avoid dealing with the ACLU, Lawsuits, etc., Wait is this the facebook that has like buttons all over the web and can track your whereabouts? Not the same facebook that bowed to china, and doesn't allow it's chinese users to talk about politics and religion is it? OnlyMeWorld.com the new alternative to facebook. No Real Names, No Email!

Shiromasa Yamamoto from onlymeworld, llc, June 8, 2011 at 3:50 p.m.

Jerry Foster from Energraphics, June 9, 2011 at 5:39 a.m.

So if someone took a photo of someone else anywhere in the world and you are in the background coming out of a strip joint, you get tagged on Facebook? ;)

Nice going guys.