Mark Zuckerberg to be deposed in Texas suit targeting Meta of ‘secretly harvesting’ facial recognition without customer consent

Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg will be deposed as part of a Texas lawsuit accusing the Facebook and Instagram parent of using facial reco📖gnition technology without customer consent.

A Texas state appea🍸ls court upheld a lower court’s decision requiring Zuckerberg to give testimo🅘ny in the case.

The lawsuit, originally filed in 2022, accused Meta of “secretly harvesting” biometric data from its users𝄹 in violation of state law.

The decision was a blow to Meta, which had sought to avoid having its boss deposed. Meanwhile, Texas argued Zuckerberg should be compelled to sit because he has “unique personal knowledge of discoverabﷺle information relevant to its claims,” the filing said.

Meta did not immediately return a 🅘reques꧒t for comment on the court ruling.

Bloomberg was .

The Texas lawsuit alleged that Meta gleaned the biometric data from photos and videos uploaded by users, shared the information with others and then “failed to destroy collected identifiers within a reasonable time✅.”

Texas is said to be seeking hundreds of billions of dollars ꦛin civi🐻l penalties – with fines of up to $25,000 for every violation of applicable state laws.

Meta has described the suit as “without merit.”

When the lawsuit was filed in February 202🃏2, Texas Attorney General Ken Patton accused the company of attempting to “take advantage of people and their children with the intent to turn a profit at the expense of one’s safety and well-being.”

In November 2021, the Facebook parent said it would shut dow꧒n its facial recognition program and proceeded to delete related data f🅰or more than a billion users.

With Post wires