Facebook is still up at making innovations in its services despite some privacy concerns alongside with those changes. It could be remembered that the social networking giant received so much criticisms for several times. Some critics said that it has never learned its lesson. Here it is once again, changing its privacy settings and rolling out another feature without users’ knowledge.
The new service feature is called Tag Suggestions. Changes in Facebook’s privacy settings allow the feature to automatically recognize a user’s face. When an image is ready to be tagged, Tag Suggestions maps the user’s face and detects whether or not there are matching images in the same or other albums. If there are, then these images are automatically tagged, saving the user time in doing so individually.
It is clear that anybody aside from you can do the tagging. Chances are that anyone can tag you in something incriminating although they do not intend to. This is very possible to occur because the user might not individually inspect the tagged images for possible problems. How much more when someone would intentionally drag you into a compromised situation with your photos?
This feature was rolled out by the company in the later part of last year. Unlike the previous features when users were given the option to opt out beforehand, this time it is different. Facebook said users should experience how it is before they could change back the privacy settings. However, privacy advocates do not accept this as a valid reason. They say this is still Facebook’s old style of pushing new features without clear explanations as to what it is about. In addition, they also said that there seems to be a pattern of changing privacy settings first and letting users ask questions later. Facebook accepted its failure to clarify the issue among its users before the roll out started.
In an explanation, Facebook said that the feature on facial recognition was meant to address complaints of users. It added that users have been complaining that tagging photos one by one is a tedious task. Working with large photo albums, it is cumbersome to tag the same people over and over again. Authorities clarified that an evaluation will be done as to whether Facebook’s action broke some privacy rules and deserved punishment.
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