In a shocking turn of events, Facebook has opted to settle a mega lawsuit that accused the tech giant of using facial recognition.
And that means around one million Iowa residents are all set to receive the $397 checks as means of settling payment by the end of this week.
The move comes after Facebook was accused of its age-old photo tagging practice which has since long been removed from the social network platform. If we look down our history, the lawsuit was actually filed nearly seven years back and that’s when the tech giant was slammed for breaking a major privacy law belonging to the state of Iowa.
This particular law does not allow companies to gather information relating to users’ biometrics without officially taking their legal consent and as you can imagine, Facebook failed majorly in that aspect.
It was not long before we saw the renowned company face worldwide criticism for its practices as many were wary as to what else the app may have been doing with user data over the years.
Similarly, we saw many question Facebook over the shady face detection technology and in the end, it had no choice but to eliminate it from the platform.
Last year, we saw Meta take another bold step after coming into power by removing it from both Facebook and Instagram. But another shockingly recent report highlighted by Vox speaks about how Meta has never mentioned whether or not they might use the technology in the near future.
While the mega lawsuit was filed in the state of Iowa, it didn’t take long for it to reach Facebook’s headquarters in the northern part of California at a District Court.
Surprisingly, Facebook had been denied so many motions that it had placed in front of the court of law in order to dismiss the case. And then a verdict came where Facebook agreed to pay out nearly $550 million but then all of a sudden, the court dismissed that too, citing that the amount was just too small.
But that was certainly interesting as it was deemed to be the largest payout offered by any social media company at that time. Finally, the court agreed upon a new payout value of $650 million.
A number of citizens have already started receiving their checks in the mail while others have criticized the way the checks were presented as one user wrote online how they had almost thrown theirs out in the bin as the check was inside a plain brown envelope that was reportedly made using recycled paper.
H/T: Engadget.
Read next: Metaverse Declared As The ‘Internet’s Logical Evolution’ By Nick Clegg
And that means around one million Iowa residents are all set to receive the $397 checks as means of settling payment by the end of this week.
The move comes after Facebook was accused of its age-old photo tagging practice which has since long been removed from the social network platform. If we look down our history, the lawsuit was actually filed nearly seven years back and that’s when the tech giant was slammed for breaking a major privacy law belonging to the state of Iowa.
This particular law does not allow companies to gather information relating to users’ biometrics without officially taking their legal consent and as you can imagine, Facebook failed majorly in that aspect.
It was not long before we saw the renowned company face worldwide criticism for its practices as many were wary as to what else the app may have been doing with user data over the years.
Similarly, we saw many question Facebook over the shady face detection technology and in the end, it had no choice but to eliminate it from the platform.
Last year, we saw Meta take another bold step after coming into power by removing it from both Facebook and Instagram. But another shockingly recent report highlighted by Vox speaks about how Meta has never mentioned whether or not they might use the technology in the near future.
While the mega lawsuit was filed in the state of Iowa, it didn’t take long for it to reach Facebook’s headquarters in the northern part of California at a District Court.
Surprisingly, Facebook had been denied so many motions that it had placed in front of the court of law in order to dismiss the case. And then a verdict came where Facebook agreed to pay out nearly $550 million but then all of a sudden, the court dismissed that too, citing that the amount was just too small.
But that was certainly interesting as it was deemed to be the largest payout offered by any social media company at that time. Finally, the court agreed upon a new payout value of $650 million.
A number of citizens have already started receiving their checks in the mail while others have criticized the way the checks were presented as one user wrote online how they had almost thrown theirs out in the bin as the check was inside a plain brown envelope that was reportedly made using recycled paper.
H/T: Engadget.
Read next: Metaverse Declared As The ‘Internet’s Logical Evolution’ By Nick Clegg
