Artists Refuse to Perform at Venues Utilizing Facial Recognition Technology
As per Rolling Stone’s report, a group of over 100 musicians, including Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello and Zack de la Rocha, have joined forces to declare their boycott of concert venues that employ facial recognition technology. The artists have expressed various apprehensions, such as privacy violation and heightened discrimination.
The boycott was organized by a digital rights advocacy group called Fight for the Future, and its ultimate goal is to remove facial scanning technology from all live events. In addition to the two founding members of Rage Against the Machine, other participating artists include Speedy Ortiz, Anti-Flag, Boots Riley and Deerhoof, among more than 80 others. The full list can be found here.
In addition to the artists, some venues participate in the activity and promise not to use this type of technology in their events. These include House of Yes in Brooklyn, Lyric Hyperion in Los Angeles and the infamous Black Cat in Washington D.C. In recent months, more than 40 major music festivals, including Coachella and SXSW, have also vowed to stop using facial recognition technology.
Fight for the Future said in a statement that face-scanning companies are “morally corrupt” and that facial recognition tools are “so imprecise” that they “actually cause more harm and problems than they solve.” While the organization says this technology is fraught with inaccuracies, for now it fears a future world “where privacy doesn’t exist and we’re identified, monitored and monitored everywhere we go.”
No one wants a police state like Minority Report, but proponents of facial recognition technology highlight some positive aspects. For example, Taylor Swift recently used this technique to weed out potential stalkers during concerts. However, it has already done some pretty nasty things. Madison Square Garden has begun using the technology to identify and ban attorneys who are complicit against the venue and its affiliates.
Several lawyers have been forcibly removed from both MSG and Radio City Music Hall in recent months, prompting a formal investigation by New York Attorney General Letitia James. The New York State Liquor Authority also recently launched a lawsuit to revoke parent company Madison Square Garden Entertainment’s liquor licenses, as reported by the New York Post . MSG sued the state over this decision and doubled down, saying “We understand that this policy is disappointing to some, but we cannot ignore the fact that litigation creates an inherently adversarial environment.”
MSG has gotten the lion’s share of the scrutiny here, but other major venues around the country have also gotten their Orwells, from New York’s Citi Field to Cleveland’s FirstEnergy Stadium and Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium, among many others. So this is definitely a thing.
Artists like Fight for the Future, Morello and Speedy Ortiz have found success with similar boycotts in the past. In 2022, Denver’s Red Rocks Amphitheater in Denver stopped using Amazon’s palm reading technology following a protest from the organization.
