They aren't fines. They are damages and go to the people affected.
In the case of the $650 million proposed settlement for Facebook proper (The judge in the case already rejected a $550 million settlement agreement as "far too little"), all Illinois Facebook users would get a check for $1000+
By the way, this article is really poorly written. The $5000 * 100 million users is not the way it works. The Illinois law says it is $1000-$5000 per violation, so the few million Illinois Instagram users (I have absolutely no idea how many there are) would be entitled to $1000-$5000 every time Instagram did a facial recognition lookup on them, which could easily cause a total liability to be in the tens or hundreds of billions of dollars.
Facebook fought against their lawsuit for years until it was finally ruled that they would have to go to trial. And now they are settling. That's likely what is going to happen here too. If they can keep it out of the courtroom, they'll pay nothing. If they can't, they'll offer up a few hundred million to make it go away.
Given it is class action suit, I would say the lawyers make most of the money and the people who have the standing to sue will get nowhere close to $1,000 .
OldHand2018|5 years ago
They aren't fines. They are damages and go to the people affected.
In the case of the $650 million proposed settlement for Facebook proper (The judge in the case already rejected a $550 million settlement agreement as "far too little"), all Illinois Facebook users would get a check for $1000+
By the way, this article is really poorly written. The $5000 * 100 million users is not the way it works. The Illinois law says it is $1000-$5000 per violation, so the few million Illinois Instagram users (I have absolutely no idea how many there are) would be entitled to $1000-$5000 every time Instagram did a facial recognition lookup on them, which could easily cause a total liability to be in the tens or hundreds of billions of dollars.
Facebook fought against their lawsuit for years until it was finally ruled that they would have to go to trial. And now they are settling. That's likely what is going to happen here too. If they can keep it out of the courtroom, they'll pay nothing. If they can't, they'll offer up a few hundred million to make it go away.
manquer|5 years ago
catacombs|5 years ago
justapassenger|5 years ago