Influential Blogger Criticizes Samsung for Automatically Airbrushing Her Photo

Why Apple Is Ditching Samsung's Chips in Favor of TSMC
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Mel Wells, a health blogger and author, took to Instagram to air her grievances with Samsung recently. Writing to her 20,000 followers, Wells complained that her new Samsung smartphone had edited her selfie of its own accord, calling the South Korean tech giant out for its presumption in ‘beautifying’ photographs by default.

The 26-year old posted a side-by-side comparison of the original and airbrushed photos on Instagram, and expressed her consternation at the realization that “the default setting on the front camera is automatically on ‘Beauty level 8’ which evidently means: seriously airbrushed face.”

This imbroglio was inevitable in many respects. Samsung smartphones have come pre-loaded with Beauty Face, a piece of technology that retouches selfies by removing blemishes and thinning the face, since last year. Even then, users questioned the unseemly message that Samsung was sending by imposing Beauty Face upon on the millions of devices it sells each year.

Samsung beautify - image cred yahoo.comImage: Yahoo

Wells went on to argue in her Instagram broadside that the automatic airbrushing of photos encourages negative body image and sets unhealthy standards of beauty, writing, “I think I’ll keep my freckles and imperfections since this is how I look in 3D and this is how all my friends see me in real life. I hope young girls are buying iPhones instead of Samsungs.”

This critique has drawn the support of many netizens, who also disapprove of the notion of tech companies telling their consumers how they ought to look.

Wells was also at pains to clarify that while users are entitled to retouch their photos as they please, companies should not impinge upon the autonomy of their consumers by making this decision for them. And while Samsung smartphone users do have the option of switching off this application, her specific bone of contention is that, by making it the default, Samsung is dictating standards of beauty and presuming that its users want to edit their photos.

People are entitled to their vanity, to be sure, but perhaps reality ought to be the default setting until users decide otherwise.

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