Everyone Knows Your Face

Part of the ongoing Big Tech's War on Users series. This week, within days of each other, Google and Meta both shipped facial recognition as the answer to trust online. Turns out you don't need a bar stool and a theme song for everybody to know your face anymore — you just need a Google Account or a Facebook profile. Google launched selfie video sign-in: record a short video of yourself once, and if you ever get locked out, a fresh selfie against that saved clip gets you back into your account. Meta launched Facebook Verified: hand over a facial-recognition selfie, get it checked against your existing profile photos, and earn a badge that tells other people you're a real human and not an AI-generated scammer. Different problems on paper — account recovery versus catfish detection — but the same instinct underneath: when trust online breaks down, the reflexive fix at two of the biggest companies on the internet is the same sentence. Give us your face. I'm not here to pretend either…