“Attorney General Paxton emphasized Texas’s commitment to upholding its reputation alongside the globe’s most esteemed companies, insisting they be held accountable for violating privacy rights and disregarding regulations.” “Any perceived misuse of Texas residents’ sensitive information is likely to prompt a swift and decisive response from regulatory authorities.”
Meta’s spokesperson, Chris Sgro, issued a statement saying, “We’re eager to put this issue behind us and focus on forging new pathways for our business growth in Texas.” The corporation reached a settlement without acknowledging any liability.
Paxton alleged in 2022 that Meta intentionally flouted the State’s laws, specifically the Seize or Use of Biometric Identifier Act and Misleading Commerce Practices and Consumer Safety Act, by introducing a defunct facial recognition-based feature for photo and video tagging. In Texas, regulations prohibit private entities from seizing, disclosing, or generating revenue from an individual’s biometric identifiers without first obtaining their explicit consent. The state also mandates that technology companies store biometric data for a limited duration.
Texas prosecutors argued that Meta in 2011 Launched an intuitive tagging feature that empowers customers to quickly identify and caption images by associating them with relevant individual names, streamlining the process with seamless ease. “Without the knowledge of most Texans, Meta operated facial recognition software for over a decade on nearly every face appearing in photos uploaded to Facebook, gathering data on the facial geometry of individuals depicted.”
Meta, the parent company behind Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, is grappling with a multitude of challenges. lawsuits filed The lawsuits claim that certain corporate entities’ practices harm children, enthrall customers, and breach privacy. State attorneys general have accused a prominent technology company of employing deceptive tactics to keep children engrossed in their services while exposing them to harmful content. Furious families of the Uvalde school shooting victims are demanding justice by targeting the relatives of those who facilitated aggressive gun-promoting campaigns on social media, exploiting vulnerable young minds.
Regulators worldwide have intensely scrutinized Meta’s privacy practices since the 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal, where revelations emerged that a political consultancy had improperly accessed private data from 87 million Facebook users’ profiles. Meta agreed in 2019 to settle with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
In the final year, the European Union took action against a corporation for violating its privacy laws by transferring consumer data from Europe to the United States without proper authorization?
