Three years on, Meta brings back facial recognition for selective use

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. New Delhi: Three years after a data-privacy controversy forced Meta Platforms to halt the facial recognition feature, the Mark Zuckerberg-led parent of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp is bringing back the contentious technology. But this time, it is being cautious by rolling it out slowly and for a very selective subset of purposes.

The company “sees facial recognition as a powerful tool for verifying identities and preventing frauds", David Agranovich, global director of security policy at Meta, told Mint on Monday. The company will roll out the technology to prevent impersonation of public figures and recover hacked, stolen and suspended accounts in most geographies Meta is present in. "In 2021, we closed down our facial recognition system—partly because regulating the use of facial recognition was incomplete.

While debates around this technology continue to evolve, we’re actively engaging with regulators to lead discussions on it," Agranovich said. "Now, we’re individually vetting our technology for maintaining privacy and security, and we’ve discussed how we’re implementing it with regulators and policymakers around the world, prior to introducing the pilot." Meta also confirmed that no third-party entity will be involved in vetting the facial data linked with users as part of the pilot. It will begin notifying select public figures, mostly those whose identities have already been used in impersonation scams, for consent to use their facial data.