Instagram — Lawsuit
Executive Summary
Meta agreed to pay $1.4 billion over five years to the State of Texas to settle a lawsuit alleging that Meta's 'tag suggestions' feature across Facebook and Instagram collected facial geometric biometric data from millions of Texans without consent, violating the Texas Capture or Use of Biometric Identifier Act (CUBI). This is the largest privacy settlement ever obtained by a single US state. Meta had shut down the facial recognition feature in November 2021 and deleted over 1 billion biometric templates.
What Happened
In July 2024, Meta agreed to pay $1.4 billion over five years to settle a lawsuit filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in February 2022. The lawsuit alleged that Meta's 'tag suggestions' feature on Facebook and Instagram unlawfully collected facial geometric biometric data from millions of Texans without proper consent, violating Texas's Capture or Use of Biometric Identifier Act, a law passed in 2001. Meta had already shut down its facial recognition feature in November 2021 and deleted over one billion face templates following an earlier $650 million class action settlement with Illinois consumers.
Who Is Affected
Millions of Texas residents whose faces appeared in photos posted on Facebook and Instagram are affected by this settlement. The facial recognition tool had scanned faces in uploaded photos to identify and tag users who had purportedly opted into the feature. Meta's biometric data collection occurred before the company discontinued the feature in November 2021.
Why It Matters
This is the largest privacy settlement ever obtained by a single US state and the largest privacy settlement obtained by any Attorney General, exceeding the $390 million Google settlement from 2022. This represents the first lawsuit and first settlement under Texas's biometric privacy law despite the statute existing for over two decades. The settlement highlights concerns about weak enforcement of state privacy laws, as the Texas Attorney General has sole enforcement authority and consumers cannot bring their own lawsuits under this law.
AI-Assisted
Event summaries are generated by Claude AI from verified sources and reviewed by humans before publication.
Sources