Instagram secretly evaluates photos biometrically

Instagram secretly evaluates photos biometrically

The US state of Texas has filed a lawsuit against secret facial recognition on Facebook and Instagram. The accusations leveled against the social media giants are enormous.

There is talk of several 100 billion dollars. This is intended to combat automatic facial recognition. This violates Texas law in several respects. The background is automatic biometric screening. Allegedly, the photo platform Instagram was against it, but in fact the uploaded pictures of the users have been stored for at least a decade and evaluated with the group's own facial recognition.

That's not all, Meta even shares this biometric data with third parties. Automatic facial recognition was introduced on Facebook in 2010. Meta reportedly eliminated the feature in the fall of 2021. In 2020, there was already a similar lawsuit, which Facebook settled with the payment of $650 million.

Meta denies everything

Meta denies the accusations. Allegedly, the accusations are unfounded. That is why the company is defending itself.

Both the Consumer Protection Act and the Biometric Data Collection Act are behind Texans. Even when biometric data is legally collected, it must never be shared. It must be deleted in a timely manner.

Serious allegations are raised

Various profile photos have been uploaded to both Facebook and Instagram for several years now. This is automatically followed by a biometric evaluation. However, the user is not informed of this in advance. That is why there is talk of deception. The biometric data obtained is not deleted, as specified. On the contrary - they are passed on to third parties. But this is not openly stated. This means that even people who are deliberately not users of Instagram or Facebook are affected.

Meta does not withstand the requested penalty

The amount of the requested fine is beyond imagination. In Texas alone, there are over 20.5 million users on Facebook and Instagram. It now remains to be seen to what extent this lawsuit will actually be crowned with success. If it is, Texas would be pleased to receive almost 600 billion dollars.