Meta’s past use of facial recognition technology has once again landed the company in potential legal trouble. On Monday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against the company, alleging it had collected the biometric data of millions of Texans without obtaining their informed consent to do so. At the center of the case is Facebook’s now discontinued use of facial recognition technology. The platform previously employed the technology as part of its “tag suggestions” feature, which used image recognition to scan photos and automatically tag users in them.Last November, Meta shut down that system, citing, among other reasons, “uncertainty” about how the technology would be regulated in the future. The year before, the company paid $650 million to settle a lawsuit that alleged it had violated an Illinois privacy law that requires companies to obtain “explicit” consent before collecting biometric data from users.According to The Wall Street Jour
