According to stereogum.com, over hundred artists have signed a pledge to boycott venues that use face scanning technology. A few months ago the nonprofit organization Fight For The Future launched a campaign to draw interest to venues that use facial recognition technology.
Because of the campaign, artists such as Tom Morello and Zach De La Rocha pledge to boycott venues that use face scanning technology. last year the campaign started when news broke out that Madison Square Garden was using the technology to kick out legal adversaries from the venue.
The pledge states: “This invasive biometric surveillance isn’t safe, especially for Black and brown people who have been falsely arrested or ejected from public places due to the tech’s baked-in discrimination.”
The pledge continues with: “In recent years, a coalition of musicians, fans, and human rights groups successfully got more than 40 of the world’s largest music festivals, including Bonnaroo and Coachella, to say they won’t use facial recognition at events. But now this tech is starting to spread — not only as a surveillance tool, but also as a form of ‘paperless’ ticketing and payment.”
Also, this is not the first time artists have pushed back against the technology because in 2019 a number of festivals announced that they would not use facial recognition after a similar protest from Fight For The Future.
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