The face recognition tool of Facebook can be either a scary thing or a useful thing (or both), depending on how you look at it. And now they’re using it to recognize you even if you’re not tagged in the photos. But they’re also using it to help the visually impaired identify people in the photos in their news feed even if they aren’t tagged. In order, though to help stem complaints that may come out of this (and you know people complain about Facebook a lot), there’s an easier way now to turn facial recognition on or off.
The idea behind letting you know who’s uploaded photos featuring you is to let you have control over your photos. So even if you haven’t been tagged, Facebook will let you know. This can also help identify people who are using your photo as their profile pic and those who may be catfishing others using your identity. After you’ve seen the image, you can either tag yourself, leave it as it is, contact the person who uploaded it if you want it taken down or something, or report it if it’s being used for nefarious purposes.
But if the person who uploaded the pic has limited his/her privacy to friends only or custom audience, then you won’t get a notification about it. Facial recognition will now also be used for the visually impaired to identify people in pictures even if they’re not tagged and relay it to the user. This will go hand in hand with the alt-text tool that has been working previously to describe photos to those with vision loss.
There will be complaints about the facial recognition being too creepy, so Facebook has gone ahead and made it easier for you to disable it. There is now just a simple toggle for yes or no so you can choose whether or not to have it on. These features are now starting to roll out globally, except in Canada and the EU where facial recognition is not available.
SOURCE: Facebook
VIA: SlashGear
