this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2024
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Filed in 2022, the Texas lawsuit said that Meta was in violation of a state law that prohibits capturing or selling a resident’s biometric information, such as their face or fingerprint, without their consent.

The company announced in 2021 that it was shutting down its face-recognition system and delete the faceprints of more than 1 billion people amid growing concerns about the technology and its misuse by governments, police and others.

Texas filed a similar lawsuit against Google in 2022. Paxton’s lawsuit says the search giant collected millions of biometric identifiers, including voiceprints and records of face geometry, through its products and services like Google Photos, Google Assistant, and Nest Hub Max. That lawsuit is still pending.

The $1.4 billion is unlikely to make a dent in Meta’s business. The Menlo Park, California-based tech made a profit of $12.37 billion in the first three months of this year, Its revenue was $36.46 billion, an increase of 27% from a year earlier.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago

Fining a company like Meta only $1.4 billion is like fining a regular person $0.0001 for something they should be going to jail for.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago

settlement 😒

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I wonder how many power lines that money could bury?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

Sorry, but the Pasadena, Texas police department needs a wing of F-16 fighter jets.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

What's the 5 year running total for Meta settlements of this sort?