A WHILE AGO, a friend of mine decided the app he really wanted for his iPhone was a non-existent Shazam for Faces – Shazam is the app that guesses what song is playing when the phone records just a little snippet.
Shazam for Faces, my buddy insisted, would be the perfect app for those awkward real-life moments when you forget the name of someone you bump into, or can’t remember who the person who’s joined the conversation at a party is. A quick covert snap on your iPhone, and Shazam for Faces would inform you of who they are and how you know them. A genius pipe dream.
Sometimes you should be careful what you wish for.
This week Facebook announced it is rolling out Tag Suggestions, facial-recognition software that analyses a group of similar photos and suggests who is in them. The feature is opt-out, not opt-in, so users will have to change their privacy settings in order not to avail of it. So by the time you upload a picture with some friends in it, Facebook can work out who they are and tell you, so you don’t have to spend time figuring it out.
Privacy groups and data-protection officials aren’t too hot on Facebook’s latest feature, but is this a case of another day, another Facebook privacy story? Or has the company gone too far?
Facial recognition instantly sparks concern among those who feel uneasy about data gathering, targeted advertising or even too much CCTV. Again, it raises the question of whether technology companies know too much about us and, if they do, what they want to do with that information.
For Facebook to keep its grip on our social interactions and archiving of our lives, it has to keep developing new features. Like a shark, it needs to keep moving or it will die. The graveyard of social networking is littered with corpses of companies that didn't move fast enough or boldly enough to sustain their brief popularity. Sometimes these changes will be subtle; sometimes they will be more dramatic, prompting people to question the motives and suggest correlations with 1984and Minority Report.
Facebook has dominated social networking because for the most part it appeals to a demographic for whom privacy is some weird cultural concept from the olden days: a generation of digital natives who don’t seem concerned if everyone knows their relationship status or accesses their personal photographs. It’s an attitude that has bled into the generation above them, who once upon a time distinguished between what was public and what was private. Now that the lines have been successfully blurred to Facebook’s advantage, it can continue to roll out things like Tag Suggestions, because it’s too late to shout stop.
The reason Facebook has been allowed to collect 500 million people’s personal data is because Facebook users have been complicit. While people complain about privacy features or evoke Big Brother, the protest against Facebook knowing so much about its users has not been loud enough to start a migration from the social network. That’s because even most of those complaining stop short of actually transforming their grievances into action. A really great way to free yourself from the increasingly creepy interpretations of Privacy According to Facebook is just to delete your account.
Like the Department of Finance and the ECB, Facebook users display a weird form of Stockholm syndrome towards the social network. Sure, Facebook is useful in many ways, but how many more weird things does the company have to do until people decide that the vague cons outweigh the vague pros?
I spend massive chunks of my days online, yet I deleted my Facebook account over a year ago and didn't lose friends or fall instantly out of the loop (I think). At the time, radio stations called me up to talk about it as if I'd just rowed across the Atlantic, smashed a truck through the Dáil gates or got into the semi-final of The X Factor.
Facebook’s profits are astronomical but not incomprehensible, because, like the success of any strict society, they rely on the sleepwalking willingness of individuals to go along with the progression. Where are we going to end up? Let’s just say, “It’s complicated.”
SHANE HEGARTYis on leave
