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Molly Roberts: What the FaceApp freak-out really tells us

Thank God for technology. How else would we know what Gordon Ramsay would look like at 92? Or the Jonas Brothers as septuagenarian has-been heartthrobs. Or Ludacris, still furious but somewhat less fast a few decades down the line.

FaceApp, a nifty download that can age you decades with a single snapshot, is filling the Web with geriatrics — and raising as many eyebrows as it has grayed. The product had a flare of popularity that petered out two years ago amid criticism that its “ethnicity filters” were a form of digital blackface. This time the concern is about privacy.