Social media giant Facebook has rolled out its much-awaited facial recognition feature to all users, but has kept its default setting on ‘off’ mode. In a blog post earlier this week, Facebook said that their new facial recognition feature will be off for all new users — unless they opt to turn it on — as well as for existing users who do nothing in response to a forthcoming alert about the new settings. This means facial recognition won’t be used by default to recognise a user in photos or videos, or to suggest their friends tag them in such content.

Facebook said in a blog, “Starting today, people who newly join Facebook or who previously had the tag suggestions setting will have the face recognition setting and will receive information about how it works. The tag suggestions setting, which only controls whether we can suggest that your friends tag you in photos or videos using face recognition will no longer be available.”

They also added that people who still have the tag suggestions setting will begin to see a notice in their News Feed from this week. The notice will include information about the new features and options to learn more about how we use face recognition, along with a button to turn it on or keep it off. If a user does not currently have the face recognition setting and do nothing, Facebook will not use face recognition to recognise the user or suggest tags.

“In addition, features like Photo Review, which lets you know when you appear in photos even if you are not tagged, as long as you have permission to see the post based on its privacy setting, will not be activated. People will still be able to manually tag friends, but we won’t suggest you be tagged if you do not have face recognition turned on,” they added.