Meta to crack down on scammers with facial recognition

Meta, the company behind Facebook and Instagram, has been testing facial recognition software to defend against “relentless” scammers on its platforms.

Outlined in a blog post, the new technology will be used to detect what Meta calls celeb-bait. Some scam advertisements use images of celebrities without their consent to make what they’re selling seem more legitimate.

Meta admits that celeb-bait is hard to crack down. Many public figures genuinely do endorse products and appear in ads so it’s hard to determine what’s legitimate.

“Our ad review system relies primarily on automated technology to review the millions of ads that are run across Meta platforms every day,” the post said.

“We use machine learning classifiers to review every ad that runs on our platforms for violations of our ad policies, including scams. This automated process includes analysis of the different components of an ad, such as the text, image, or video.”

If an ad is flagged as potential spam, the new software will now compare the face in it to the public figure’s social media profile pictures. When it finds a match and confirms a scam, the ad will be blocked.

The tech giant says it has already tested it on “a small group of celebrities and public figures” and that the results are promising.

Meta adds: “We immediately delete any facial data generated from ads for this one-time comparison, regardless of whether our system finds a match, and we don’t use it for any other purpose.”

The feature will begin rolling out to public figures in the next few weeks. Celebs will receive notifications if they are protected but can opt-out at any time.

Facial recognition will also be used to help users recover their accounts. Currently, Meta requires users to upload an official photo ID if their account has been compromised.

Thanks to the new software, this process could be sped up by users uploading a video of themselves instead. The facial recognition would compare the clip to the account’s profile picture.

Again, Meta says any data generated will be held securely and then deleted.

Feature image credit: Meta Newsroom

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