Meta discontinued its Tag Suggestions facial recognition feature on Facebook in November 2021, deleting more than one billion facial recognition templates. Since October 2024, Meta has tested and then deployed facial recognition on Facebook and Instagram for two new purposes: detecting scam ads that misuse celebrity images (celeb-bait), and offering users an optional video-selfie route to recover compromised accounts. The celeb-bait protection and account-recovery feature are available to public figures and users on an opt-in basis, with the UK, EU, and South Korea added in March 2025.

Tag Suggestions, announced December 2010 and rolled out broadly by June 2011, used DeepFace, a nine-layer neural network trained on four million Facebook images, to match faces in newly uploaded photos to existing tagged photos and suggest names. Meta shut down the Face Recognition system on November 2, 2021, deleting more than one billion facial recognition templates. Starting October 2024, Meta began testing two new facial recognition uses: comparing faces in suspected scam ads against public figures' Facebook and Instagram profile photos to detect celeb-bait fraud, and letting users verify their identity via an optional video selfie to recover locked accounts. Meta's own help page states the comparison is done by an automated system rather than manual review by a person. By March 2025, Meta launched these features in the UK, EU, and South Korea following regulator engagement. Legal costs related to the prior system include a $650 million Illinois BIPA settlement (2021), a $68.5 million Instagram BIPA settlement (2023), and a $1.4 billion Texas biometric settlement (July 2024).