Gaming faces: diagnostic scanning in social media and the legacy of racist face analysis

ABSTRACT

Filters and apps purporting to analyze the face and provide insight into a person’s personality, heritage, or future have become a popular part of social media interactivity. This article examines the marketing and design of such products in relation to historical systems of racial, ethnic, moral, and psychological differentiation based on the face, such as physiognomy and eugenics. In particular, it explores user-generated ‘Which Are You?’ filters and apps such as FaceApp, Fantastic Face, and Gradient, which provide visual forecasting, horoscopes, and beauty and ethnic analysis based primarily on face scans. It argues that affinities of these automated optical tools to racist and discriminatory historical systems of face analysis – especially within the context of the representation or performance of identity on social media – can have important implications for the adoption of more extensive systems of facial detection and recognition. Packaging diagnostic and predictive face analysis in these ways can generate acceptance of, and support for, government and corporate applications of these technologies to identify or categorize individuals and predict their behavior, despite widespread social justice concerns over the design, accuracy, administration, and ethics of such systems.

KEYWORDS:

• Algorithms
• apps
• artificial intelligence
• eugenics
• facial recognition
• physiognomy
• racism
• surveillance

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Google Play’s thresholds immediately above one million downloads are 10 million and 100 million downloads.

2 The sample comprises Age Face, Age Face Make Me Young, Aging Booth, Artistry Virtual Beauty, BabyGenerator, BabyMaker, Face Secret, Face Truth, FaceApp, Fantastic Face, Future Face, Golden Ratio Face, Gradient, Life Advisor, Magic Face, Make Me Old, Old Age Face, Old Age Face Effect, Old Face Aging Booth, Old Face and Daily Horoscope, Old Me, Oldify Camera, Opixels, Pretty Scale, and Scanner Appearance.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Stephen Monteiro

Stephen Monteiro is Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at Concordia University, Montreal. His research focuses on the impact of smart technologies and networked communication practices on social structures, interpersonal relations, and the construction and circulation of identity. He is the author of The Fabric of Interface (The MIT Press, 2017) and Screen Presence (University of Edinburgh Press, 2016) and editor of The Screen Media Reader (Bloomsbury, 2017). His research has appeared in Media, Culture & Society, Fibreculture, Screen, Continuum, Senses & Society, Grey Room, and Photography & Culture, among other journals. He has held visiting positions at Ambedkar University Delhi and McGill University [email: [email protected]].