Like that guy who sits right next to you on the bus even though every other seat is free, the people at Facebook are once again all up in your business. This time it’s over their sneaky implementation of facial recognition technology.
Guys, it’s like you’re not even trying to look good anymore.
Thanks to this new feature, if a photo of me (or someone that looks like me) gets posted to Facebook, the site will suggest to my friends that they tag me in it — and I for one am tired of people tagging me as Brad Pitt. I mean, it’s an honest mistake, but still.
If you’re like me, you actually spend a great deal of your time trying to untag yourself from incriminating photos. I call this Sunday.
Of course, Facebook subscribes to the school of thought that it is easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission; each of its 500+ million users were automatically opted in — there wasn’t even an opt out setting available.
The good news is there is a way to disable this feature — delete your account.
If, however, you must have a Facebook account, here is another way.
Photo by Simon Owen. Used with permission under Creative Commons license 2.0