In a Twitter thread, tech enthusiast and app researcher Jane Wong disclosed a discovery—Facebook is currently testing out a "video selfie" feature.
In the several screenshots posted, the "Facial recognition-based Identity Verification" instructs users to "hold their phone at eye level" and asks them to "take a video selfie."
This video selfie feature requires users to look into an on-screen circle and turn their heads in different directions, allowing Facebook to get a complete view of the user's face and confirm his/her identity.
Facebook has a long-withstanding problem with fake accounts made by automated programs, and it seems this video selfie feature they are testing will be one of their proposed solutions.
The Bot Problem
All social media platforms have a bot problem.
"Bots" or fake social media accounts created by automated programs have been growing in numbers, and Facebook seeks to eliminate them. In the last three months of 2018 alone, Facebook disabled 1.2 billion fake accounts. During the first quarter of 2019, they took down 2.19 billion of these fake accounts.
Bots can have for dubious purposes. They can use and understand natural language almost as well as a real person. Therefore, they can post and interact with the actual users on a social media platform. They can post malicious content, including fake news and campaigns for slander or posts that may boost something or someone's popularity.
Those malicious content can reach millions of users and sway public opinion and warp public perception. It can propagate distrust and cause social divides. The subsequent manipulation of online discourse and conversations can even impact something as essential as a national election.
Due to the severe threat they pose to society, Facebook is right in wanting to eliminate bots.
What Facebook is Doing to Handle the Bot Problem
The tech giant currently uses an artificial intelligence system to weed out fake accounts. However, bots are becoming more sophisticated and harder to detect. This reason probably prompted Facebook to try out the video selfie feature as a means to identify legitimate accounts from the fake ones.
Should the video selfie feature be released, however, the question lies in whether they can convince account owners to use it.
User Reluctance
Although the video selfie feature resembles facial recognition technology, Facebook emphasized that the feature they are testing does not use facial recognition and only confirms that a real human is in front of the camera.
The speculation was not entirely baseless, however. The Federal Trade Commission fined the company $5 billion because they failed to inform 30 million users about the facial recognition technology employed when users are tagging other people in their photos.
With Facebook's notorious track record of breaching privacy laws, users may be reluctant to use the feature in the future. The company is still facing user privacy-related concerns despite Mark Zuckerberg's decision to "shift into a privacy-focused service."
In the screenshots posted in Twitter, Facebook promised that no one else will be able to see the videos of the users and that they will be deleted 30 days after the confirmation of the identity.
