Meta will pay Texas $1.4B in settlement over facial recognition software

Meta reached a $1.4 billion settlement with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Tuesday to settle a 2-year-old lawsuit related to the company's use of facial recognition software.

“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 Attorney General Paxton in a press release.

The massive settlement stems from a lawsuit filed in 2022, alleging that Meta's past use of facial recognition technology violated the state's privacy protections. Prosecutors alleged Facebook had collected millions of biometric identifiers from photos and videos uploaded by users through an automated photo tagging feature. Further, the lawsuit claimed that Facebook failed to disclose this practice to users and obtain their consent. At the time, Meta said these claims were "without merit."

A neat feature with big privacy concerns

The lawsuit focused on a Facebook feature rolled out in 2011 called "Tag Suggestions," which claimed to make it easier to tag photos with the names and accounts of people in the photo. Facebook automatically turned this feature on for American users. State prosecutors alleged this feature ran facial recognition software on virtually every face on Facebook for nearly a decade. In 2019, Facebook made the system explicitly opt-in, but it was too little too late.

By 2021, Facebook announced it would shut down its facial recognition systems and delete a massive collection of more than a billion users' biometric data. At the time, Facebook's VP of artificial intelligence Jerome Pesenti said facial recognition was a powerful tool, but noted the need to address "growing concerns about the use of this technology as a whole."

While the feature was interesting and slightly helpful for users, Tag Suggestions may have been trouble than it was worth. In 2021, Facebook was ordered to pay $650 million to settle a class action lawsuit concerning the same feature's data collection practices.

“We are pleased to resolve this matter, and look forward to exploring future opportunities to deepen our business investments in Texas, including potentially developing data centers," Meta spokesperson said in an email to TechCrunch.

Meta agrees to pay the state of Texas $1.4 billion over five years, and the first payment of $500 million is due in the next month, according to a court filing.