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Abstract
Biometric technologies such as facial recognition have prompted a great deal of interest concerning their utilization by governments and corporations and the consequent impacts of this on entire populations. However, there is an emergent trend of technological democratization with services such as PimEyes and Facecheck.ID. These services enable their users to find multiple instances of any face and potentially ascertain the identity of the person in question. While promoted as a measure to prevent identity theft and image misuse as well as to combat another nascent trend of malicious simulated media (i.e. deepfakes), the utilization of these services may facilitate stalking, harassment, and even vigilantism. Furthermore, these technologies and their use highlight concerns about the body in terms of both legal ownership and even a semiotic aspect where images that represent faces exemplify stakes that indicate changes to how embodiment can be conceptualized. Engaging particularly with the works of Shoshana Zuboff, Paul, Virilio, and Kelly A. Gates as well as other STS scholars, this work aims to show the implications, uses, and contentions surrounding these technologies through digital ethnographic work conducted on several field sites which clearly display the populations and reasons for the use of democratized facial recognition technologies.