There's mission creep, and then there's just creepy. Facebook has activated automatic facial recognition as a default setting.
As users wrangle with things like whether to check in when away from home (or even from within their homes) or whether tag their friends in pictures (or stop their friends from tagging them), Facebook's quiet activation of the recognition feature stung, oh, about 600 million users this morning.
First rolled out in December in the United States, it's now an active, default setting for users across the globe. And those three words are the operative -- and continuing -- gouge when it comes to Facebook and privacy: active, default setting.
Almost every time FB activates something, privacy experts raise some flags -- and then the internet takes off with it.
Is it a normal progression of how users consume, browse and interface with the WWW? Or is it an encroachment to be resisted? Up to you.
Here's a quick tutorial on how to deactivate the photo tagging:
