Facebook is Under Lawsuit on Use of Facial Recognition in “Tag Suggestions” in US – Mark Again in Trouble!
Facebook to face a class action lawsuit over its use of facial recognition used in photo-tagging in US, NPR reports.
Stay tuned with Nexter.org.
Facial recognition is a crime
The lawsuit states Facebook gathered biometric information without users’ consent and used it in tagging of uploaded photos. The feature that somehow was useful for the users always seemed to be a little bit creepy.
These “tag suggestions” followed every photo and the name of the users offered to tag was almost always correct. Such technology is against the law in Illinois.
The lawsuit demands compensation of up to $5,000 for every time a user’s face is used without their permission. The judge, James Donato, stated the damages could cost the company billions of dollars.
Facebook stated that there was no reason for filing a lawsuit and they would fight it.
What’s facial recognition technology?
Facebook rolled out its “tag suggestions” feature in 2011. The feature suggests who might be tagged in uploaded photos, based on a database of users’ faces.
The software was initially to tag any face without name suggestion. But the improved version allows tagging the exact person in the pic.
Source: TechCrunch
Previous 4 lawsuits
At the end of March 2018, Facebook was under firestorm after four lawsuits hit the company in one week. A Facebook user, Lauren Price of Maryland, filed a suit in San Jose on behalf of up to 50 million people whose data was used by Cambridge Analytica.
Individual shareholders in Facebook, Fan Yuan and Robert Casey, each filed their own class action lawsuit against the company, CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and CFO David Wehner. Also, the fourth lawsuit is filed in San Jose by attorney Jeremiah Hallisey, on behalf of the company’s shareholders against Zuckerberg, COO Sheryl Sandberg, and board members.
At the same time, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg took out full-page ads in several British and American newspapers Sunday to apologize for a “breach of trust” in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. After that, the company lost nearly $100 billion of its market value.
Source: NY Daily News
See also:
- Mark Zuckerberg to Testify before US Congress Facebook Stock Has Plunged 7% (UPD)
- Oh, for Zuck’s Sake! 1 Out of 10 Americans Deleted Facebook Account + 5 KEY Facts from Congressional Hearing (UPD)
- New Day, New Loss: Facebook Lost $100B After Data Scandal and How Tim Cook Mocked Zuckerberg
