Facial recognition software is a controversial technology. With companies like Clearview AI scrubbing the Internet for billions of faces without consent, even governments are turning against the tech. One such government is the State of Texas, who is plotting to completely bankrupt Facebook parent company Meta.
Texas v Meta
Reported by The Rio Times, the U.S. State of Texas has announced plans to cripple Meta over its facial recognition software. The lawsuit revolves around the social media company's decade-long use of automatic facial recognition. According to the suit, Meta has breached laws revolving around face tracking.
With the technology introduced into the Facebook platform in 2010, the service automatically detected faces and labelled them in their servers. This allowed any image to label all Facebook users in the frame. Meta has already started to turn away from facial recognition after a massive year of controversies in 2021.
Before this, the company was already facing legal battles from the state of Illinois which cost the company $650 million and a $350 payout to Illinois Facebook users. The State of Texas isn't planning to be as light with the Big Tech company. Instead, the State is planning to sue the company for “thousands of billions of dollars” in an attempt to bankrupt the Zuckerberg empire.
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A company built on lies
The Texas v Meta Platforms lawsuit alleges that “Facebook’s omnipresent empire was built on deception, lies, and brazen mistreatment of Texans’ privacy rights – all for Facebook’s economic gain.” Meta has been accused of not deleting biometric data it obtained from citizens as well as sharing that data with third party companies.
The lawsuit also claims that the issue spreads to non-Facebook users as anyone can share someone's face, label it and have that picture picked up by third party companies. The lawsuit also claims that Meta has introduced the technology to Instagram without permission. Accusations claim the company “secretly subjected all photos uploaded to Instagram to its facial recognition technology without Instagram users (or non-users) knowing about it”.
Meta has claimed that the introduction of facial recognition into Instagram is “not true”. However, if it is proven true, and Texas gets the payout its demanded, the lawsuit could bankrupt the company. What a news story that would be.