Facebook says it will delete facial recognition data on more than a billion users Posted on : Nov 03 - 2021

Just days after rebranding itself, Facebook announced plans to delete a trove of the most worrisome data that the world’s biggest social network collected on more than a billion individuals.

In a blog post Tuesday, Facebook’s newly named parent company Meta explained that it would close shop on its facial recognition systems and delete a massive collection of more than a billion facial recognition templates used to pair faces with photos and videos. Facebook will no longer do that pairing moving forward for users who previously opted in.

Facebook introduced facial recognition in 2010 to automatically tag photos with names. The feature was automatically enabled at launch, and Facebook only made the system explicitly opt-in in 2019, a choice that explains how it managed to compile more than a billion facial recognition profiles.

“Looking ahead, we still see facial recognition technology as a powerful tool, for example, for people needing to verify their identity, or to prevent fraud and impersonation,” Facebook VP of artificial intelligence Jerome Pesenti wrote in a blog post. “… But the many specific instances where facial recognition can be helpful need to be weighed against growing concerns about the use of this technology as a whole.”

Pesenti noted the uncertain environment for facial recognition technology in the decision to limit Meta’s facial recognition work to a narrower set of applications. View More