In other words ...
... Facebook has decided that the AI algorithm has had enough training data to ID six or seven 9s of all photos and no longer needs the "help" of the luserbase putting names to faces.
I'll give you even odds that it "accidentally", if quietly, gets turned on again in six to eighteen months to update that data, and stays on until somebody conclusively (and publicly) proves that it is, in fact, on.
As for Facebook deleting the data... bullshit. Facebook has never deleted anything, They aren't going to start now. Anybody who thinks otherwise is a fool. Even if they very publicly go out of their way to "prove" that the data is off their systems ... well, that's what backups are for. And you know they have backups. They may even "prove" they delete the backups. That's what off-site backups are for. And you know they have those, too.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
