Facebook is shutting down its facial recognition system

Facebook said Tuesday it plans to stop using facial-recognition software that could automatically recognize people in photos and videos posted on the social network, marking a massive shift both for the tech industry and for a company known for collecting vast amounts of data about its billions of users.

The social network, whose parent company is now named Meta, said it will delete more than 1 billion people's individual facial recognition templates as a result of this change. The company said in a blog post that more than a third of Facebook's daily active users, or over 600 million accounts, had opted into the use of the face recognition technology.

According to a press release, the company believes that while facial recognition can be helpful in certain instances, such as identity verification or fraud prevention, there are legitimate concerns to be addressed.

"There are many concerns about the place of facial recognition technology in society, and regulators are still in the process of providing a clear set of rules governing its use," the press release reads. "Amid this ongoing uncertainty, we believe that limiting the use of facial recognition to a narrow set of use cases is appropriate."

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