The world’s biggest social network, Facebook, stated in a post on Thursday, Januray 31 that they were re-enabling the photo Tag Suggestions feature for users in the US. The feature was actually taken off line last year by Facebook to make technical improvements. According to the social network, the facial recognition tag feature is now back and can be to “easily identify a friend in a photo and share that content with them.” The original feature was made public in the US at the end of 2010. The rest of the world got the tag feature in June 2011 and was eventually suspended after a negative reaction from users in America.
The feature is actually pretty straight forward. A user uploads a new image and Facebook’s facial recognition system automatically matches the new photo to previously tagged images. It groups together similar images and suggests names of people in the image for tagging.
Interestingly, the face recognition is still on by default, as it was before, and Facebook states that it has not changed the feature much. The social network claims that, “This is the same feature that millions of people previously used to help them quickly share billions of photos with friends and family.”
The feature can be turned off by following these steps from The Next Web:
“Click the wrench icon at the top right of Facebook, select Account Settings, and then click on click Timeline and Tagging, or just click here if you’re already logged in.
At the bottom, locate the setting that says “Who sees tag suggestions when photos that look like you are uploaded?” and click Edit on the far right.
Select your preference from the dropdown menu: Friends or No One.
If at step three you do not see an Edit Settings option, you will likely see “(this is not yet available to you).” This simply means Facebook has yet to roll out the feature to your account, and you’ll need to wait for it to do so before you can change your privacy settings for it.”
Source: The Next Web