July 25 (UPI) — Facebook this week offered to pay $650 million to settle a class-action facial recognition lawsuit in federal court in Illinois.
The proposal was a $100 million increase from its previous offer, which District Judge James Donato, of the Northern District of California, rejected in June for being too paltry.
The social media company last year was found to have violated the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act with its facial recognition software, which suggested friends to be tagged in uploaded photos.
The state said Facebook didn’t get users’ consent before enabling the feature. Three Illinois residents sued the company in 2015 and sparked a class-action lawsuit.
The law requires payments of between $1,000 to $5,000 for each violation, which would total much higher than the settlement offer. The new offer will result in a payout of between $200 and $400 to each user affected by the lawsuit.
