Meta has agreed to a $1.4 billion settlement with Texas in an information protection lawsuit. The tech giant is alleged to have used users' biometric data without their permission, officials announced on Tuesday.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said the settlement was the biggest reached by a single state. In 2021, a judge approved a Settlement of $650 million with the corporate formerly generally known as Facebook over similar allegations from users within the state of Illinois.
“This historic settlement demonstrates our commitment to stand up to the world's largest technology companies and hold them accountable for their violations of the law and Texans' right to privacy,” Paxton, a Republican, said in an announcement.
Meta said in an announcement: “We are pleased to resolve this matter and look forward to exploring future opportunities to deepen our business investments in Texas, including potential data center development.”
The lawsuit, filed in Texas in 2022, alleges that Meta violated a state law that prohibits the gathering or sale of an individual's biometric data, reminiscent of their face or fingerprints, without their consent.
The company announced in 2021 that it might close to modernize its facial recognition system and erase the faceprints of over a billion people amid growing concerns in regards to the technology and its misuse by governments, police and others.
At the time, greater than a 3rd of Facebook's each day lively users had consented to facial recognition by the social network's system. Facebook had introduced facial recognition greater than a decade earlier, but steadily made it easier to opt out of the feature because it faced scrutiny from courts and regulators.
In 2019, Facebook stopped mechanically recognizing people in photos and asking them to “tag” them. Instead of creating this feature the default setting, users were now asked in the event that they wanted to make use of the facial recognition feature.
Texas filed an identical lawsuit against Google in 2022. Paxton's suit alleges the search giant collected hundreds of thousands of biometric identifiers, including voiceprints and facial geometry records, through its services reminiscent of Google Photos, Google Assistant and Nest Hub Max. That lawsuit remains to be pending.
The $1.4 billion is unlikely to have much of an impact on Meta's business. The Menlo Park-based technology company posted a profit of $12.37 billion in the primary three months of this yr. Its revenue was $36.46 billion, up 27% from a yr ago. Meta will report its second-quarter results on Wednesday.
Meta shares fell $4.06 to $461.65 on Tuesday, down lower than 1%.
Lathan is a corps member of the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-reported issues.
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