Texas has secured a $1.4 billion settlement with Meta over facial recognition technology that has since been discontinued.
Attorney General Ken Paxton said the deal resolves claims that Meta’s technology violated Texans’ privacy rights.
It is the largest single-state settlement ever reached under Texas’ biometric identifier law.
Meta will pay the settlement amount over five years.
Paxton’s office had sued Meta in February 2022.
It claimed the company’s collection of facial data from photos uploaded between 2010 and late 2021 constituted “tens of millions of violations” of Texas privacy protections for biometric data.
The social media giant had already discontinued its facial recognition system before the lawsuit and committed to deleting data related to over 1 billion faces.
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A Meta spokesperson said: “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.”
Before rebranding to Meta, Facebook settled a 2020 class-action lawsuit in Illinois over facial-recognition practices for almost $550 million.
It was after unsuccessful attempts to dismiss the case.
