The companys not stopping the use of facial recognition.
Nor is it deleting facial recognition data for more than a billion users.
Its deleting some very specific facial recognition templates those used to automatically tag people in photos on Facebook.
It’s free, every week, in your inbox.
Facebooks a lot of things, but stupid isnt one of them.
Facebook cut its teeth imagining the future.
And, along the way, he stumbled into creating the modern social web connection.
Some of us grew up with three-way calling and AIM groups, others on Facebook and Instagram.
Zuckerberg and the rest of the Meta gang want to capture the zeitgeist of change again.
And where they think everything is going, the company wont need facial recognition.
The Metaverse
A lot of pundits are struggling to describe the Metaverse idea.
When the internet took off people also thought of it like a place.
And thats what the Metaverse is going to shape up to be as well.
Well just leave that comparison hanging out there.
Self regulation
And that brings us to the cherry on the top of this crap sundae.
The language Meta uses throughout its press release makes it clear that this is a marketing scheme.
Theres no upside to spending company time and resources developing yesterdays technologies.
Facial recognition is mostly useful as an on-gear technology and Facebook doesnt sell phones.
The Metaverse isnt about storing or sharing your familys photographs.
Its about digital ownership.
However, theres some value in convincing people youve done something for the greater good.
And Metas trying to frame this as part of its rebrand.
In itspress releaseon updating its facial recognition policies, it mentions a lack of government regulation several times.
Yet never once does it explain why the government would need to regulate this particular use of facial recognition.
The reality is that this tech doesnt appear to have been unethical or harmful.
It was an opt-in technology.
Chances are, even theupcoming European regulationson facial recognition tech and AI would have allowed for its continued use.
Metas actually pulling a facial recognition system out of production here that users really liked.
It alerted people when theyd been tagged in a photo, which was pretty useful.
And it also provided audio cues as to who was in a photo for the visually impaired.
Id recognize the smell of this dumpster fire anywhere, by any name.
