The social media networking site Facebook is known for its photo uploading and sharing capabilities. Over the past few years, Facebook has been integrating software that has facial recognition capabilities. This has caused controversy as to whether or not this software should be legal, nevertheless whether or not it is moral. For week one’s question “Whats so “New” about New Media?”, I decided to delve further into the topic of facial recognition and how it is just one of the many new additions to media that has incorporated more advanced technology. Unfortunately due to all the controversy surrounding this software, many lawsuits have come to light. In a recent lawsuit, Facebook user Namesh Patel took a stand for his privacy and decided Facebook’s facial recognition software was going too far. Patel’s Lawsuit claims that Facebook is violating Biometric Information Privacy Act by maintaining a database of user’s faces. The BIPA or Biometric Information Privacy Act “Sets limits on how companies can store and use people’s biometric identities” (Strickland, December 2016). Laws like BIPA have caused concerns due to the lack of application to social media. Although this law was originally intended for limiting the government's use of facial recognition, cases like this one have tried to use it in application to social media. Facebook claims that BIPA does not cover using facial recognition for the purpose of photographs and physical descriptions. Facebook is also receiving a lot of flack for programming this software into users’ Facebooks without consent. “Facebook did not obtain consent”, rather they integrated the software and in order to turn it off, a user must manually go do it in their settings (Buckley & Hunter, December 2011). This software will continue to cause issues in the future if privacy laws are not put into place in the near future.
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