Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg shall be deposed as a part of a Texas lawsuit accusing the Facebook and Instagram parent of using facial recognition technology without customer consent.
A Texas state appeals court upheld a lower court’s decision requiring Zuckerberg to present testimony within the case.
The lawsuit, originally filed in 2022, accused Meta of “secretly harvesting” biometric data from its users in violation of state law.
The choice was a blow to Meta, which had sought to avoid having its boss deposed. Meanwhile, Texas argued Zuckerberg needs to be compelled to sit down because he has “unique personal knowledge of discoverable information relevant to its claims,” the filing said.
Meta didn’t immediately return a request for comment on the court ruling.
Bloomberg was first to report on the choice.
The Texas lawsuit alleged that Meta gleaned the biometric data from photos and videos uploaded by users, shared the knowledge with others after which “didn’t destroy collected identifiers inside an inexpensive time.”
Texas is alleged to be looking for a whole lot of billions of dollars in civil penalties – with fines of as much as $25,000 for each violation of applicable state laws.
Meta has described the suit as “without merit.”
Mark Zuckerberg shall be deposed within the Texas suit. AP
When the lawsuit was filed in February 2022, Texas Attorney General Ken Patton accused the corporate of attempting to “make the most of people and their children with the intent to show a profit on the expense of 1’s safety and well-being.”
In November 2021, the Facebook parent said it might shut down its facial recognition program and proceeded to delete related data for greater than a billion users.
With Post wires
