Facebook adds ‘tag suggestion’ facial recognition to assist in more widely distributing unflattering pictures of you

How much does it suck when you receive the dreaded notification that a friend of yours has tagged you in a Facebook photo?

As you’re probably familiar with, we’re all pretty hardwired to select the most flattering images of ourselves, and images taken during a night out often yield red wine-induced flushing, unexpected panty exposure, boner-like cargo pant bunching or, most commonly, more chins than a Chinese phonebook. It’s rare that a friend’s photos will compliment all participants, and friends tend to select the ones that flatter them. Unfortunately for all of us, next week, the process of tagging you in every picture from that wedding with the horrible eggplant colored bridesmaid’s dress where you think maybe you had puke in your hair is set to become much more efficient.

While the privacy concerns of Facebook “recognizing” your face can be a little scary, the implications are far, far worse for the vain and/or rosacea-prone-when-drunk. Facebook explained the handy new feature on their blog:

While tags are an essential tool for sharing important moments, many of you have said tagging photos can be a chore. (Like that time you had to tag your cousin and her fiancé over and over and over again in 64 different pictures of their engagement party, and then go back and tag the guests.)

Since October, we’ve been working to make this process easier for you. First we added group tagging, so you could type one name and apply it to multiple photos of the same person. Now we’re announcing tag suggestions, which will make tagging multiple photos even more convenient.

If you’re not too excited about the proposition of being tagged automatically, you can kind of opt out, says Facebook:

If for any reason you don’t want your name to be suggested, you will be able to disable suggested tags in your Privacy Settings. Just click “Customize Settings” and “Suggest photos of me to friends.” Your name will no longer be suggested in photo tags, though friends can still tag you manually. You can learn more about this feature in our Help Center.

Alternatively, you can disable the entire process by punching someone in the face when they whip out a camera at a bar at 3AM, because that is just not cool.