Facial Recognition for Facebook?

The Facebook movie was released awhile back, and while some media are not calling it a biopic of the founders who created the now giant social network, others call it a document of the cultural shift that’s taken place over the last years since the application was first introduced. Either way you see it, it is certain that Facebook and the wider phenomena of social networking has changed our lives.

Each time Facebook introduces a new feature, it’s met with both cheers and criticism, and it’s no secret that despite the company’s success in the market and culture, it has a particularly dodgy reputation when it comes to privacy. They are currently testing new technology that, they say, will save loads of time for Facebook users. Facebook writes on their site that the majority of users spend most of their time uploading, browsing and tagging photos. And so they claim to be working to improve the experience within those applications.

As Facebook is about making and connecting with “friends,” it’s no wonder that the users spend enormous amounts of time browsing the billions of photos posted by it’s 400 million active users. Normally you’d have to go through and tag photos of friends and yourself if you were so inclined, but now Facebook is trying to make things easier with face recognition.

Using similar algorithms for face detection that digital cameras are now using, Facebook can spot a face in an image once it’s uploaded, and a box shows up with a space for you to enter your or a friend’s name, tagging them for recognition across the system.
One blogger at Fast Company wonders, though, if the next step along the line is facial recognition itself.

They haven’t announced it yet, but it wouldn’t be surprising if they suddenly employed facial recognition to all photos you showed up in. It’s one thing to tag yourself or a friend or two from home in your own digital photo library, but how would you feel if photos out there you never even saw had your name attached? Maybe you’re just in the background? Maybe doing something or being somewhere you don’t want others to see or know? It’s an interesting and potentially upsetting or controversial topic at the least.

Take a look at the original post here:

http://www.fastcompany.com/1666154/facebook-privacy-face-tagging-recognition

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