Technology Development

Another immature feature hindering the privacy of 700 million Facebook users has been introduced by the social networking site which will enable tagging photos through facial recognition. To disgust the privacy seeking people even more, this has been set as a default feature. The feature via the facial recognition technology groups similar faces together and automatically suggests their tag based on previous tagging. This may be useful for people who don’t care much for tags but can prove to be very humiliating and embarrassing in certain situations. In cases where snaps are uploaded just for fun and not for revealing the identity of individuals like those from a naked mud fight or a teen booze party, the automatic tag suggestions can really enrage the users.

But to the relief of all the Facebook users who do not wish to be a part of the automatic tagging, there is also an option to turn off the default facial recognition feature. To disable the feature one has to go to the “privacy settings” of account where a “customize settings” option is available. From there, go to “things others share”. Then selecting “suggest photos of me to friends” enables one to select from the added friends which ones to allow tag photos and which ones to restrict. Even though disabling the feature is not a tough task, it may be annoying to those who still don’t know much about it. The default setting might have helped in the promotion of this feature but Facebook must know that its users might take this as a major privacy blunder. With the already going on debate on issues of privacy and safety of personal data on Facebook, this step puts a question mark on the developers. The long term consequences of this feature are still under inspection.