Facebook updates its controversial facial recognition settings

Facebook is making its facial recognition features easier to turn off and will no longer automatically opt new users into face tagging, the company announced Tuesday.

Facebook has long used facial recognition to identify faces in photos its users upload. This allowed the company to automatically suggest tags based on your friends list, in a feature called “tag suggestions.” 

In 2017, the company started replacing “tag suggestions” with a broader “facial recognition” setting. This controlled tag suggestions, as well as the ability for Facebook to alert users if their photos were being used by someone else on the platform. But the “facial recognition” setting wasn’t available to all of Facebook’s users, and the Federal Trade Commission called tag suggestions “deceptive” because it was enabled by default. Other privacy advocates criticized the feature because the name “tag suggestions” didn’t make clear that Facebook was storing biometric data about its users.

That’s now changing. Anyone who didn’t already have a “facial recognition” setting will get the update, as well as a notification explaining the feature and the ability to disable it. The “tag suggestions” feature will be no more, and Facebook will no longer automatically opt new users into the feature, though anyone who previously had it enabled will continue to be opted-in unless they update their settings. 

You can check your settings by selecting “face recognition” under your Facebook privacy settings, or via this link.

The social network is currently facing a multibillion dollar lawsuit over its facial recognition tech. The lawsuit dates back to 2015, but has been slowly progressing — and so far not in Facebook’s favor. The company recently lost an appeal in which it attempted to have the suit dismissed. 

The FTC also imposed new rules about how Facebook could use facial recognition as part of its settlement with the company over the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The social network must “provide clear and conspicuous notice of its use of facial recognition technology,” the FTC said.