A new update has been making the rounds on Facebook, an update that could potentially end up having a pretty huge impact on the kind of trust people place in the social media platform. What’s basically happening is that Facebook is experimenting with facial recognition technology.
The main purpose of this technology is going to be to verify the identity of users, and in order to make sure that this technology ends up working the way that it is supposed to, the social media giant will be asking users to upload photos of themselves. These photos, which would ideally be taken as selfies, would show users’ faces in different angles and therefore allow Facebook to analyze them and use them for facial identification in the future (which would probably work like CAPTCHA to give bots and other bad actors a bit more tough time).
According to app researcher Jane Manchun Wong, the new feature will ask users to look at several directions so that Facebook can have different angles of a user's face. Wong also explained that "No one else will see the video selfie (captured by facial recognition-based verification system) and will be deleted 30 days after the confirmation."
Facebook has come under a lot of criticism for a wide variety of security issues that have been faced by users of the platform, but the fact of the matter is that a lot of people seem to think that this is not a very good way for the platform to try and secure its userbase. For one thing, having facial recognition technology might just be dangerous if it ends up falling into the wrong hands. The integration of facial recognition into our technological landscape might seem inevitable, but it’s important to take a step back and try to think about whether it is safe and also whether it is necessary.
The most important aspect that everyone would be worried about is how Facebook will protect this extremely sensitive user data. After all, most users are probably going to be worried about security breaches occurring, and there is also the fact that Facebook might potentially use this data for the purposes of selling it to brands and advertisers, something that the social network is already well known for doing on a regular basis.
Read next: Facebook is bringing some new changes in its corporate logo to make it more clear what it owns
The main purpose of this technology is going to be to verify the identity of users, and in order to make sure that this technology ends up working the way that it is supposed to, the social media giant will be asking users to upload photos of themselves. These photos, which would ideally be taken as selfies, would show users’ faces in different angles and therefore allow Facebook to analyze them and use them for facial identification in the future (which would probably work like CAPTCHA to give bots and other bad actors a bit more tough time).
According to app researcher Jane Manchun Wong, the new feature will ask users to look at several directions so that Facebook can have different angles of a user's face. Wong also explained that "No one else will see the video selfie (captured by facial recognition-based verification system) and will be deleted 30 days after the confirmation."
Facebook has come under a lot of criticism for a wide variety of security issues that have been faced by users of the platform, but the fact of the matter is that a lot of people seem to think that this is not a very good way for the platform to try and secure its userbase. For one thing, having facial recognition technology might just be dangerous if it ends up falling into the wrong hands. The integration of facial recognition into our technological landscape might seem inevitable, but it’s important to take a step back and try to think about whether it is safe and also whether it is necessary.
Facebook is working on Facial Recognition-based Identity Verification, asking users take selfie looking at different directions pic.twitter.com/w4kZHEpDeG— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) November 5, 2019
The most important aspect that everyone would be worried about is how Facebook will protect this extremely sensitive user data. After all, most users are probably going to be worried about security breaches occurring, and there is also the fact that Facebook might potentially use this data for the purposes of selling it to brands and advertisers, something that the social network is already well known for doing on a regular basis.
Read next: Facebook is bringing some new changes in its corporate logo to make it more clear what it owns
