Facebook Wants To Know Your Face!

When you post photos to your Facebook profile, you're asked to tag the folks in the pic. Depending on the picture, that can be a time consuming process. Facebook understands your pain, and has introduced a new feature to assist with it.



In a blog post yesterday, Facebook announced "Tag Suggestions", which explained "When you or a friend upload new photos, we use face recognition software—similar to that found in many photo editing tools—to match your new photos to other photos you're tagged in. We group similar photos together and, whenever possible, suggest the name of the friend in the photos."

Sound considerate enough, but what about those of us who might not automatically liked to be tagged in random friends' photos? As an example, I can relate a story from a recent Saturday night, where I happened to be in Cave Creek at a western-styled saloon, and saw a pretty well-known Scottsdale-Phoenix business character being 'mauled' (there's no other way to describe it) by a ravenous woman who some might liken to a feline animal. There clearly was drink involved by both parties, and I easily could've snapped 'party pics' and posted them to my page with his photo tag. Which he might've not appreciated.

To disallow this 'feature' on your FB page, another FB setting adjustment is necessary. The NY Times wrote:
"Tag Suggestions are only made to people when they add new photos to the site, and only friends are suggested. If for any reason someone doesn’t want their name to be suggested, they can disable the feature in their Privacy Settings.”

You can change the privacy settings relating to the facial recognition feature, but it is a little confusing. If you want to disable the feature, go your account privacy settings and click “customize settings” at the bottom of the page. Once in this area, scroll down to a list of options called “things others share,” and then click on the button that says “suggest photos of me to friends.” You will then be given the option to disable the facial recognition feature."

So Facebook again skirts with the comfort levels of users. But think of the possibilities! As one NY Times commenter noted....
"If you can perfect this technology via Facebook, wouldn't it be easy to create a master database of faces for resale? That "facebank," along with the technology for ID'ing faces, would be quite handy for law enforcement and marketers. Imagine walking into a store and having your image, pulled from the surveillance camera, linked to your shopping behavior and demographic information."

I'm in love with the Modern World. Read TechCrunch for a more in-depth argument for both sides of the story.