Meta to end use of the facial recognition system on Facebook, says it will delete all related data

Facebook’s parent company Meta announced its decision to end the Facial Recognition System on Facebook over the coming weeks. It would delete data of over a billion facial recognition profiles stored by the company.

Meta, Facebook’s parent company, announced that they would shut down the Face Recognition feature on Facebook as part of a company-wide effort to limit the use of facial recognition in its products in the coming weeks. In the newsletter released by the company on its website, it also stated that as part of the decision to shut down the Facial Recognition System on Facebook, users who have opted in the Face Recognition setting would no longer be recognized in the photos and videos posted on the app or the website, and it would also delete the facial recognition template used to identify them.

Facebook introduced the facial recognition feature in 2010 to automatically tag photos and videos with names. The system was automatically enabled at launch. Facebook only made the feature optional in 2019, explaining how the social media company collected and compiled more than a billion facial recognition profiles.

Meta’s decision to remove facial recognition from the world’s largest social media platform comes as the tech industry has faced inquiry over the past few years over the ethics of using the technology.