https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20211103/11500147871/surprising-important-facebook-sorta-shuts-down-face-recognition-system-just-because.shtml

A month ago, I highlighted how Facebook seemed uniquely bad attaking a long term view and publicly committing to doing things that are good for the world, but bad for Facebook in the short run . So it was a bit surprising earlier this week to see Facebook (no I'm not calling it Meta, stop it) announce that it was shutting down its Face Recognition system and (importantly) deleting over a billion "face prints" that it had stored.

The company's announcement on this was (surprisingly!) open about the various trade-offs here, both societally and for Facebook, though (somewhat amusingly) throughout the announcement Facebook repeatedly highlights the supposed societal benefits of its facial recognition.