On November 2, 2021, Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. announced in a blog post that it will shut down its “Face Recognition” system in coming weeks.

The company cited the need to “weigh the positive use cases for facial recognition against growing societal concerns, especially as regulators have yet to provide clear rules.”

The Facebook platform has long used facial recognition to provide recommendations for who to tag in photos and videos, and to alert users when a photo they were in is uploaded by another user. As part of this change, the company will delete the facial recognition templates of users who had previously turned on the Face Recognition setting, and will no longer automatically identify them in memories, photos and videos and users will no longer see suggested tags or be able to turn on suggested tagging.