Facebook facial recognition declared illegal in Germany

Despite Facebook recently making it easier to opt out of facial recognition photo tagging, it looks like the social network is still taking heat for its service. Germany has just declared the feature as a violation of “the right to anonymity” – which means that Facebook in its current state is now illegal in the country. Facebook has two weeks to make sufficient changes – by making it easier for German users to delete their stored faces or disabling the feature entirely, if not the company will be facing a fine of up to $500,000.

While $500,000 isn’t much to the company, being banned to all users in Germany along with the bad press could do more harm than good. Facebook still maintains that it’s not breaking any laws, but we’ll probably see some changes to the service within two weeks time. What is your take on photo recognition? Do you think that it deserves to be outlawed?

George Wong
Categories: Web
Tags: Facebook, facial recognition, germany, illegal