GIANT CRISIS: Facebook wipes out tracks, no longer recognizes faces and erases data from one billion people – FonTech

Controversial, Facebook has decided to take a relatively unexpected step. It will get rid of the face recognition function and allegedly erase the data of up to one billion of its users, writes TechCrunch.

It is undergoing huge changes

The report comes just days after the company Facebook has announced its renaming to Meta and the creation of a virtual world A metaverse in which users are served by virtual people. It is naive to believe in the improvement of company habits, but the company is definitely trying to improve its broken reputation.

How informs CNBC, Facebook stops its familiar face recognition feature. According to the company, the reason is the concern of users and regulatory authorities, but this service is used by up to a third of their users, ie more than 600 million accounts. This drastic move involves erasing the data of the faces of up to one billion users. Of course, Facebook can no longer recognize human faces in photos or videos.

They’ll turn it off soon

Controversial service, according to The New York Times, raised a number of privacy concerns and brought the company a government investigation or even a lawsuit. The report was delivered by Jerome Pesenti, Meta’s vice president of artificial intelligence. “Every new technology brings with it potential for benefits and concerns, and we want to find the right balance,” Pesenti said in a blog on the company’s website. He adds that the feature will be turned off in the coming weeks.

This is supposed to be the biggest change in the history of facial recognition technology, and according to Pesenti, it requires great care. There are places where people value such services – this technology is used, for example, by a service that helps the visually impaired to find out if they or one of their friends is in the photo.

They promise transparency

The meta wants to continue to use face recognition in cases where it is necessary to verify a person’s identity, for example to prevent fraud. However, it promises to inform the public in future use.

Huge changes are taking place while the company is again under fire due to a former employee. Frances Haugen has issued a number of internal company documents to the public, which have revealed worrying facts. The company also lost billions of dollars due to Apple, which checked the collection of data via the IDFA identifier with a new feature in iOS.

According to these documents, the company is allegedly well aware of the problems that its applications cause and either does not deal with them or cannot solve them. While efforts to improve reputation may be transparent, it is certainly good news for users’ privacy – but whether Meta can break free from constant fire and regain the trust of people and regulators remains questionable.