Size is beginning to matter a lot to Meta in data privacy court cases

Every company that’s ever been sued has had to decide what outcome is too painful for the owners to bear if they lose.

When one is representing Meta in U.S. court, too painful can often be more a matter taste than real financial discomfort. Meta’s fiscal 2023 net income was $39 billion.

Plaintiffs and government regulators in biometric data privacy cases are becoming more vocal about that dynamic, saying even fines and damages that most people have a hard time comprehending are not enough to corral problematic behaviors.

Lina Khan, chair of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, would like to stop Meta from monetizing children’s personal data, for instance. But she knowns there’s too much money in it, so she’s been wondering aloud what penalty, if any, would make even Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recoil.

(She may have found it. Four years ago, the FTC fined Meta $5 billion for alleged violations of a privacy order. Zuckerberg has since sued the FTC, saying it’s behaving unconstitutionally. Some observers feel Meta seeks to forever neuter the agency.)

And there’s a proposed class action (No. 3:18-cv-01880) in which some members suing Meta are rejecting a proposed $90 million settlement. Settlement negotiations, they say, should start at $900 million. In fact, a more equitable penalty for Meta and compensation for claim members is $1.2 trillion.

This is a case, only tangentially biometric in nature, that has mostly favored Meta.

It alleges that the social media company tracked its subscribers’ travels online after logging out of the service. That brings up the formidable prospect of defending against allegations that Meta violated federal wiretap law and California’s Invasion of Privacy Act.

If Meta loses, the outcome very well may make Zuckerberg jump.

There’s one last (for now) case to know about in this context.

It, too, has been breaking Meta’s way for the most part.

In it, the plaintiff contends in case 5:12-md-02314 that Facebook broke Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act when it scanned a photo of his face as a non-subscriber on a subscriber’s account. No consent was sought, which violates BIPA.

The facial template was stored, another alleged violation. Meta says the template was stored for a split second and was not otherwise used. The plaintiff says storage is storage regardless of how long.

Meta says it had 3 billion monthly active users in fiscal 2023. It is safe to say there are at least that many images of non-subscribers that Facebook could have scanned and stored for a nanosecond.

Article Topics

biometric identifiers  |  Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA)  |  biometrics  |  data privacy  |  face biometrics  |  FTC  |  lawsuits  |  Meta