Meta Platforms has agreed to pay $1.4 billion to Texas to resolve the state’s lawsuit accusing the Fb mum or dad of illegally utilizing facial-recognition know-how to gather biometric information of hundreds of thousands of Texans with out their consent.
The phrases of the settlement, disclosed on Tuesday, mark the biggest accord ever by any single state, in keeping with the legal professionals 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 privateness legislation, in keeping with legislation companies monitoring the litigation. A provision of the legislation supplies damages of as much as $25,000 per violation.
Texas accused Fb of capturing biometric data “billions of instances” from images and movies that customers uploaded to the social media platform as a part of a free, discontinued function known as “Tag Solutions.”
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 Basic Ken Paxton in an announcement mentioned the settlement marks the state’s “dedication to standing as much as the world’s largest know-how firms and holding them accountable for breaking the legislation and violating Texans’ privateness rights.”
Texas and Meta mentioned they reached an accord in Might, 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 legislation that’s thought of one of many nation’s most stringent. The corporate additionally denied wrongdoing.
Alphabet’s Google individually is preventing a lawsuit by Texas accusing the corporate of violating the state’s biometric legislation.
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