Google landed on the right side of the privacy debate by making its newly released facial recognition feature for Google+ opt-in. If you’ll remember, “Tag Suggestions,” Facebook’s similar service, is not only opt-out, but also strongly encouraged! (“Before you opt out of using this feature, we encourage you to consider how tag suggestions benefit you and your friends. . . “)
Should you choose to enable it, “Find My Face” scans photos of you that have been uploaded by friends and then offers suggestions about who to tag and (most importantly) allows you untag yourself.
On the other hand, it’s also named “Find My Face,” which is either laughable or the wrong side of the creepy line, depending on where you’re standing. Try saying it out loud. Something’s a little off, no? [Read: “YO GOOGLE! WHERE’S MAI FACE AT, B?”]
The only other problem we see with this feature is that thus far, on Google+, the ratio of people who have gotten close enough to us to ever take a picture to strangers from Southeast Asia is roughly 1:15.
