Facebook without facial recognition is a step forward

Facebook once recognized all the friends who were shown in a photo and displayed their names. Subsequently, the social network will only indicate whether you can be seen in a photo that someone uploaded. Now that is no longer possible either.

What appears to be a technological step backward is actually a social advance. Meta, as Mark Zuckerberg’s company was recently named, restricts facial recognition.

Too much praise for the group would be out of place. Meta does not operate in a pioneering manner, but rather reacts to the zeitgeist. The more China expands monitoring of its people through facial recognition algorithms, the more controversial the technology has become in the West. Apple, Google, and Microsoft have long limited facial recognition functionality.

Technologically, it would be easy to search the entire network for any face in a split second – as in the case of private photo albums stored on Google or Apple. But for good reason, tech companies block this option in order to protect users’ privacy. This makes face recognition the first digital technology to be deliberately restricted.

This has long been the case in other areas: for example, there are no more CFC sprayers and there are no combustion engines without a catalytic converter and soot filter. Technologies can be regulated. It even works so well that it gets oversized and over-regulated at times. Especially in Switzerland. Many concerns about genetic engineering have become obsolete thanks to new processes such as Crispr-Cas9, but there is still a comment. Here, technological progress can lead to social progress.

Not everything that is technically possible is actually made. It is up to people how they want to deal with new technologies. Whether he rules it or controls it.