Jay Edelson, an attorney whose firm represented Facebook users said the settlement showed that strong privacy legislation is vital.
“From people who are passionate about gun rights to those who care about women’s reproductive issues, the right to participate in society anonymously is something that we cannot afford to lose,” Mr. Edelson added.
What to know about the lawsuit
Originally, three Illinois residents sued Facebook under the Biometric Information Privacy Act, a state law that allows residents who have had their faces scanned for data, without written consent, to sue. The case was moved for the trial to California.
The lawsuit concerned the gathering of facial data for a 2015 Facebook feature, Tag Suggestions. Facebook’s photo-labeling service uses face-matching software to suggest the names of people in photos posted by users. The suit claims that Facebook stored millions of users biometric data without their knowledge or consent.
Facial recognition software is becoming more controversial in the wake of nationwide protests over police brutality. Amazon, Microsoft, and IBM are trying to suspend or limit law enforcement’s access to the technology, claiming it too frequently misidentifies African Americans.
