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I realize that Facebook is like the Phillip-Morris of the tech industry around here, but I still find this a little unsettling. Facial recognition is near ubiqu

I realize that Facebook is like the Phillip-Morris of the tech industry around here, but I still find this a little unsettling. Facial recognition is near ubiquitous among social media and photo library apps. The “tangible” damages to all of these users is not clear to me. I can’t help but wonder if there was some other driving factor here The legal firms representing the plaintiffs asked to get about $110 million of the settlement money. And there it is.

chaostheory 6y ago
That’s the driving factor for many consumer lawsuits against companies
ve55 6y ago
That is how class action lawsuits always work though; Facebook is an obvious target for breaking the law here for many reasons, but I would say their scale (being the largest) and their ability to profit more efficiently than most other services contributed greatly to it. I'm happy the users get paid directly here rather than the money going to a barely-related government agency, as they were the ones whose privacy was breached illegally.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
pseudalopex 6y ago
The law requires other social media services get consent too. Photo library apps can recognize faces locally. The law Facebook broke is designed to prevent tangible harm. Class actions are designed to make unprofitable cases profitable. $110M seems excessive but it's only 16% of the settlement.
- handedness 6y ago
  16% unusually low for a class action suit.
gruez 6y ago
>The legal firms representing the plaintiffs asked to get about $110 million of the settlement money. >And there it is. Would you rather that there's no profit motive, and they don't get sued at all?
- fingerlocks 6y ago
  No, and I did not intend to suggest that. I naively believed that class action lawsuits required at least some amount of actual harm/fraud to individuals.
  - sixothree 6y ago
    The people chose to live in Illinois where they are protected from something. Whether you agree or disagree with that something is besides the point.
    - fingerlocks 6y ago
      Besides what point? I started the thread making the point that I don’t agree with that “something”, so no I’m still very much on point.
mNovak 6y ago
Not to play into the metaphor, but that feels a little like saying every brand of cigarettes is dangerous, why should Marlboro take heat? Sure, it may not literally kill you, but I think a lot of people agree that ubiquitous data harvesting is not great. Illinois took a small stand against that with its biometric data law.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
snoshy 6y ago
I don't quite agree that this is a meaningless or trivial violation of Illinois law, but let's set that aside. The fact that end users actually get anything more than a few dollars is what's actually shocking to me. Usually it's a case of the lawyers keeping near 80-90% and the rest of the pittance is allocated to administrative overhead, with a few pennies thrown to plaintiffs that weren't actually driving the lawsuit. Or then the payout (if it's big) goes to the state or federal coffers, is another one, with victims seeing no compensation at all. I am actually very genuinely curious about how they managed to get even a $100+ payout to those affected.
apple_innocent 6y ago
"The "tangible" damages to all these users is not clear to me." The Illinois Supreme Court decided there is no need to claim actual damages. As the article clearly states, there are statutory damages.1 You might think of these as like a fine you pay everytime you violate Illinois privacy law. 1. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/01/victory-illinois-supreme-court-protects-biometric-privacy https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/01/victory-illinois-supre... Certainly we can be cynical about class actions. Class action lawyers handling cases with millions of class members probably care about individual class members as much as over-compensated Facebook employees care about individual Facebook users (or internet users Facebook spies on in general). One difference is lawyers are regulated, licensed professionals who have to follow ethics rules, while Facebook employees implementing and deploying privacy-violating technology for profit are under no such restrictions. Imagine if lawyers could use all the personal, confidential information they see in the course of their work with clients to finance an online "platform" for targeted advertising. Knowing so much about people's personal lives, they could pass on "relevant ads" to clients. Perhaps they could even promise that their services would "always be free". Fortunately, they can't. However, Facebook can.
- spurdoman77 6y ago
  > One difference is lawyers are regulated, licensed professionals who have to follow ethics rules LOL
  - dodobirdlord 6y ago
    Seriously though, lawyers are basically never sanctioned or disbarred, and the level of misbehavior required to invite sanctions is extremely high.
    - washadjeffmad 6y ago
      So it's an effective deterrent? What matters is there's a recognized process for it. What does Facebook call doing something profitable that crosses a legal or ethical boundary before their competitors can do it? Promotable innovation, probably.
bryanrasmussen 6y ago
The legal firms taking the case of the plaintiffs took on risk, normally when you take on risk and succeed you should be rewarded.
- fingerlocks 6y ago
  What’s the downside risk of losing this case?
  - Invictus0 6y ago
    The cost of paying a bunch of lawyer's salaries for months on end...
spoonjim 6y ago
The benefit of class actions isn’t the money paid to the plaintiff, it’s the money taken from the defendant. The money could be set on fire and the judgment would still be a good thing because it punishes the offender, the problem is that at FB’s wealth even $500 million is a sneeze.
lovecg 6y ago
It’s a system that converts greed into (an approximation of) justice. There might be better systems, but it’s not the worst one to have.
njarboe 6y ago
At least in this class action suit the members of the class are getting $338. A decent amount of money. Not just some $10 coupon the company would have been happy to send you for free.

chaostheory 6y ago

That’s the driving factor for many consumer lawsuits against companies

ve55 6y ago

That is how class action lawsuits always work though; Facebook is an obvious target for breaking the law here for many reasons, but I would say their scale (being the largest) and their ability to profit more efficiently than most other services contributed greatly to it. I'm happy the users get paid directly here rather than the money going to a barely-related government agency, as they were the ones whose privacy was breached illegally.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

pseudalopex 6y ago

The law requires other social media services get consent too. Photo library apps can recognize faces locally. The law Facebook broke is designed to prevent tangible harm. Class actions are designed to make unprofitable cases profitable. $110M seems excessive but it's only 16% of the settlement.

handedness 6y ago
16% unusually low for a class action suit.

gruez 6y ago

>The legal firms representing the plaintiffs asked to get about $110 million of the settlement money. >And there it is. Would you rather that there's no profit motive, and they don't get sued at all?

fingerlocks 6y ago
No, and I did not intend to suggest that. I naively believed that class action lawsuits required at least some amount of actual harm/fraud to individuals.
- sixothree 6y ago
  The people chose to live in Illinois where they are protected from something. Whether you agree or disagree with that something is besides the point.
  - fingerlocks 6y ago
    Besides what point? I started the thread making the point that I don’t agree with that “something”, so no I’m still very much on point.

mNovak 6y ago

Not to play into the metaphor, but that feels a little like saying every brand of cigarettes is dangerous, why should Marlboro take heat? Sure, it may not literally kill you, but I think a lot of people agree that ubiquitous data harvesting is not great. Illinois took a small stand against that with its biometric data law.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

snoshy 6y ago

I don't quite agree that this is a meaningless or trivial violation of Illinois law, but let's set that aside. The fact that end users actually get anything more than a few dollars is what's actually shocking to me. Usually it's a case of the lawyers keeping near 80-90% and the rest of the pittance is allocated to administrative overhead, with a few pennies thrown to plaintiffs that weren't actually driving the lawsuit. Or then the payout (if it's big) goes to the state or federal coffers, is another one, with victims seeing no compensation at all. I am actually very genuinely curious about how they managed to get even a $100+ payout to those affected.

apple_innocent 6y ago

"The "tangible" damages to all these users is not clear to me." The Illinois Supreme Court decided there is no need to claim actual damages. As the article clearly states, there are statutory damages.1 You might think of these as like a fine you pay everytime you violate Illinois privacy law. 1. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/01/victory-illinois-supreme-court-protects-biometric-privacy https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/01/victory-illinois-supre... Certainly we can be cynical about class actions. Class action lawyers handling cases with millions of class members probably care about individual class members as much as over-compensated Facebook employees care about individual Facebook users (or internet users Facebook spies on in general). One difference is lawyers are regulated, licensed professionals who have to follow ethics rules, while Facebook employees implementing and deploying privacy-violating technology for profit are under no such restrictions. Imagine if lawyers could use all the personal, confidential information they see in the course of their work with clients to finance an online "platform" for targeted advertising. Knowing so much about people's personal lives, they could pass on "relevant ads" to clients. Perhaps they could even promise that their services would "always be free". Fortunately, they can't. However, Facebook can.

spurdoman77 6y ago
> One difference is lawyers are regulated, licensed professionals who have to follow ethics rules LOL
- dodobirdlord 6y ago
  Seriously though, lawyers are basically never sanctioned or disbarred, and the level of misbehavior required to invite sanctions is extremely high.
  - washadjeffmad 6y ago
    So it's an effective deterrent? What matters is there's a recognized process for it. What does Facebook call doing something profitable that crosses a legal or ethical boundary before their competitors can do it? Promotable innovation, probably.

bryanrasmussen 6y ago

The legal firms taking the case of the plaintiffs took on risk, normally when you take on risk and succeed you should be rewarded.

fingerlocks 6y ago
What’s the downside risk of losing this case?
- Invictus0 6y ago
  The cost of paying a bunch of lawyer's salaries for months on end...

spoonjim 6y ago

The benefit of class actions isn’t the money paid to the plaintiff, it’s the money taken from the defendant. The money could be set on fire and the judgment would still be a good thing because it punishes the offender, the problem is that at FB’s wealth even $500 million is a sneeze.

lovecg 6y ago

It’s a system that converts greed into (an approximation of) justice. There might be better systems, but it’s not the worst one to have.

njarboe 6y ago

At least in this class action suit the members of the class are getting $338. A decent amount of money. Not just some $10 coupon the company would have been happy to send you for free.