Meta Platforms has agreed to pay $1.4 billion to Texas to resolve the state’s lawsuit accusing the Facebook parent of illegally using facial-recognition technology to gather biometric information of hundreds of thousands of Texans with out their consent.
The phrases of the settlement, disclosed on Tuesday, mark the most important accord ever by any single state, in keeping with the attorneys for Texas, whose authorized workforce included the plaintiffs agency Keller Postman.
The lawsuit, filed in 2022, was the primary main case to be introduced beneath Texas’ 2009 biometric privacy law, in keeping with regulation companies monitoring the litigation.
A provision of the regulation offers damages of as much as $25,000 per violation.
Texas accused Fb of capturing biometric info “billions of instances” from photographs and movies that customers uploaded to the social media platform as a part of a free, discontinued function referred to as “Tag Recommendations.”
A spokesperson for Meta mentioned the corporate is happy to resolve the matter and appears ahead to “exploring future alternatives to deepen our enterprise investments in Texas, together with probably creating information facilities.”
It has continued to disclaim any wrongdoing.
Texas Lawyer Common Ken Paxton in an announcement mentioned the settlement marks the state’s “dedication to standing as much as the world’s largest expertise firms and holding them accountable for breaking the regulation and violating Texans’ privateness rights.”
Texas and Meta mentioned they reached an accord in Could, weeks earlier than the beginning of a trial in state courtroom was scheduled to start.
Meta individually agreed to pay $650 million in 2020 to settle a biometric privateness class motion that was introduced beneath an Illinois privateness regulation that’s thought-about one of many nation’s most stringent.
The corporate additionally denied wrongdoing.
Alphabet’s Google separately is fighting a lawsuit by Texas accusing the corporate of violating the state’s biometric regulation.
