Facebook’s facial recognition creeps me out

Wouldn't you like to know?

In a process known as tagging, Facebook users have long been identifying the friends that appear in the photographs uploaded to the social networking site. Tagging involves someone selecting the area of a photograph in which a person appears and then associating the person’s name or Facebook profile to that area. It’s all been a manual process, though an easy one.

I noticed today that one of the photos in my collection I purposefully have not tagged showed up on my Facebook page today: a photo of my son on his bike. Facebook had found this untagged photo and was asking me who he was. Apparently Facebook has implemented facial recognition software.

Seeing my son in Facebook’s crosshairs creeps me out. While I’m happy to tag my other Facebook friends (I figure if someone’s on Facebook, too, that makes them fair game), I’ve avoided tagging those not on Facebook. My kids do not have Facebook accounts and aren’t likely to have them for some time. I upload occasional pictures of them but I never tag them.

The Facebook Machine does not need its hooks in them. That some automated process is prodding me to identify them crosses a line. Yes, I have a whole blog devoted to their lives, with a mountain of information about them already on the Internet, but I still trust the Internet far more than I do Facebook. I can find out who is looking at the blog, for instance.

So, no, I will not be tagging that photograph. And I will be far more careful with the info I share on Facebook from now on.