Users of Facebook from Europe have been reporting that Facebook is sending continuous push notifications to turn on the facial recognition feature.
A journalist from Metro named Jimmy Nsubuga has reported that he is getting continuous notifications from Facebook to turn on the facial recognition technology. The company advised that an opt-in option would be pushed to users as part of changes to its terms and conditions within the EU.
The company is hoping to convince users to voluntarily allow the controversial tech. Facebook started to use facial recognition back in 2012 as the app started automatically tagging users in photo uploads. Users who choose not to turn on facial recognition still have to go to through the continue screen before they can switch off this feature.
Facebook is said to be taking advantage of users fear saying that facial recognition allows the company to stop a stranger using your photo to impersonate you.
The upcoming changes to the EU data protection law prevents its users from automatically being opted into facial recognition hence the company has to take the permission of the user before processing the users face into their database.
But data protection experts spoken to earlier this week do not believe Facebooks approach to consent will be legal under GDPR.
A spokeswoman from Facebook told the news company TechCrunch that European users who are being asked about the tech now as part of the May 25th GDPR deadline are part of its rollout platform to comply with the new terms and conditions.
“The flow is not a test, it is part of a rollout we are doing across the EU,” she said. “We are asking people for opt-in consent for three things — third party data for ads, facial recognition and the permission to process their sensitive data.”
Many users believe that Facebook is trying to perform a manipulated acceptance instead of consent from the users by using big data insights from its own platform. While legal challenges take time the users of Facebook are being socially engineered.
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Source: TechCrunch