We hold social media platforms accountable when they breach privacy rules

Meta, the parent company of Instagram, agreed to a $68.5 million settlement in a class action that alleged the gathering of identifying features of an individual (biometrics) were used without consent.

The class action alleged that Instagram’s facial recognition technology violated the State of Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act. Instagram, which has now removed the facial recognition feature from its app, claimed that it was only using facial recognition to find photos and videos the user appeared in on Facebook (also owned by Meta.) However, the legal action alleged that the app captured this information without consent. This was a violation of Illinois law.

There were 4.8 million members of the class action.