Meta agreed to a massive settlement with Texas over the company’s practice of capturing and using biometric data from millions of users in the state without authorization.
The $1.4 billion settlement is the largest amount ever obtained by a single state, and the largest amount Attorney General Ken Paxton has ever secured.
“This is the first lawsuit brought and first settlement obtained under Texas’s ‘Capture or Use of Biometric Identifier’ Act and serves as a warning to any companies engaged in practices that violate Texans’ privacy rights,” Paxton’s office said in a press release.
In 2011, Meta rolled out a new feature, initially called Tag Suggestions, that it claimed would improve the user experience by making it easier for users to “tag” photographs with the names of people in the photo. Meta automatically turned this feature on for all Texans without explaining how the feature worked. Unbeknownst to most Texans, for more than a decade Meta ran facial recognition software on virtually every face contained in the photographs uploaded to Facebook, capturing records of the facial geometry of the people depicted. Meta did this despite knowing that CUBI forbids companies from capturing biometric identifiers of Texans, including records of face geometry, unless the business first informs the person and receives their consent to capture the biometric identifier. After only approximately two years since filing the petition, Texas reached a settlement agreement with Meta. The company will pay the state of Texas $1.4 billion over five years. (Texas Attorney General's Office)
The Texas lawsuit was filed in 2022, a year after the company said it would shut down its facial recognition system and delete face records of more than a billion people, according to the Associated Press.
“After vigorously pursuing justice for our citizens whose privacy rights were violated by Meta’s use of facial recognition software, I’m proud to announce that we have reached the largest settlement ever obtained from an action brought by a single State,” said Paxton. “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. Any abuse of Texans’ sensitive data will be met with the full force of the law.”
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