I can't read the article without an Economist account, but I think the headline is a bit too broad. There are a lot of people who happily use facial recognition

I can't read the article without an Economist account, but I think the headline is a bit too broad. There are a lot of people who happily use facial recognition to unlock their iPhones every day, and I haven't seen much of a backlash against that. Why not? Because it's isolated on the device, and can be turned off whenever you want. I think the real concern is the combination of facial recognition with vast centralized databases. Those big centralized databases are just begging to be exploited and abused, whether for commercial, authoritarian, criminal, or even creepy "LOVE-INT" stalking by the people running the databases. I think facial recognition (and other forms of recognition) can have a bright future in society, but only if they conform to our expectations of privacy. Those expectations have been created over thousands of years based on how we interact with people. The closer that computer interaction can hew to existing social conventions, the smoother path it will have to adoption. I don't mind if the waiter in a local restaurant recognizes me when I come in; in fact I like it! But I don't think I would like it very much if I knew he was calling 15 different data brokers to report on me every time he sees me.