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

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]