After violating Texas state privacy laws by automatically tagging users’ faces on its site, Meta will pay Texas a whopping $1.4 billion.

As reported by The New York Times, Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, agreed to a record $1.4 billion settlement with Texas yesterday, over allegations that it had illegally collected facial recognition information on millions of users in violation of state law.

Meta violated Texas state privacy laws by automatically tagging users’ faces on its site, according to a suit filed in 2022. The agreement is the largest privacy settlement by a U.S. state, said Texas’ attorney general, Ken Paxton. Meta will pay Texas the $1.4 billion over five years, Paxton’s office said.

Texas sued Meta over its use of a feature called “tag suggestions” that allowed users to tag individuals in photos. The tool, which was introduced in 2011, used facial recognition software and was automatically turned on for users in violation of Texas’ law requiring companies to first seek permission, according to the state’s allegations.

Amazingly enough, Texas, Illinois and Washington are still the only three states that have biometric privacy laws that curb the collection of facial, voice and other biometric data. Meta previously paid Illinois $550 million in 2020 to settle a similar suit over facial recognition.

Of course, Meta did not admit to any wrongdoing in the settlement. The amount of the settlement is a fraction of Meta’s revenues, which totaled $139 billion in 2023, most of which stem from the company’s ad business that uses consumer data for targeted marketing.

Texas has also sued Google for allegedly violating the same biometric privacy law. Google’s revenues totaled over $305 billion in 2023.

Why do I get the feeling that these settlements are just the cost of doing business for these companies? Hmmm.

So, what do you think? Are settlements like these going to make any difference in them capturing biometric data – especially when only three states have comprehensive biometric laws? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Image created using GPT-4’s Image Creator Powered by DALL-E, using the term “robot getting a facial recognition scan”.

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