Meta has agreed to pay a $1.4 billion settlement with Texas to clear its privacy lawsuit over allegations of using facial recognition data of users without consent.
The company faced the same allegations and settled it with a $650 million agreement last 2021 as Facebook in Illinois.
(Photo : Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP via Getty Images)
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Meta Resolves Biometric Lawsuit With Texas
In a statement, Meta shared that the situation is now resolved. The company also stated that it is looking forward to creating opportunities, especially the potential of developing data centers in the state.
"This historic settlement demonstrates our commitment to standing up to the world's biggest technology companies and holding them accountable for breaking the law and violating Texans' privacy rights," said Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
The lawsuit, filed in 2022, argued that Meta has violated the state law that prohibits companies from collecting and selling biometric information, such as face and fingerprint, without any permission.
Meta Experiences Increased Expenses With Settlements
According to a Chicago-based class action attorney Jay Edelson, Meta has already paid more than $2 billion to settle lawsuits against its biometric privacy violations. In 2021, Facebook decided to delete and remove its facial recognition procedure.
More than a third of Facebook's daily active users had chosen to use the facial recognition feature to log in to their accounts. The social media platform also stopped the automatic facial tagging and left the choice to its users.
"That is a huge signal to other companies that they should be extremely careful if they want to trade in individuals' biometric information," Edelson added.
The $2 billion cost of settlement is only a small portion of Meta's overall revenue which totaled $36.46 billion for the first three months of 2024.
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