Facebook to pay $650M to settle a facial recognition suit in Illinois, after judge says the original settlement of $550M did not adequately punish the company
Facebook has agreed to pay a total of $650 million in a landmark class action lawsuit over the company's unauthorized use of facial recognition, a new court filing shows. Tweets: @caseynewton . Thanks: @jeffjohnroberts Tweets: Casey Newton / @caseynewton : Last quarter Facebook generated $197.1 million in revenue every day https://twitter.com/... Thanks: @jeffjohnroberts
Context & Ripple Effects
This case has been running since a 2016 court ruling established that Illinois' Biometric Information Privacy Act applies to Facebook's photo-tagging system; after a federal appeals court forced Facebook to face the class action in 2019, the company offered a $550M settlement in January. The judge rejected that figure as inadequate punishment, and Facebook has now raised the total to $650M.
Why it matters: this is the first time the adequacy lever has visibly repriced a mega-settlement rather than just delaying one, and it lands on a company earning roughly $197M in revenue per day by Casey Newton's math — meaning the real cost is the precedent, not the check.
First-order effects
- Facebook pays an incremental $100M beyond its January offer, and the roughly 1.57M Illinois residents who ultimately file claims receive larger individual payouts — filings later showed $300+ each, a quarter of the ~6M eligible residents.
Second-order effects
- Plaintiffs' lawyers immediately replicated the playbook: within weeks of the $650M deal, Facebook faced a new suit alleging Instagram collects biometric data without consent, and Google later paid $100M under the same Illinois law for Photos face grouping.
Third-order effects
- A single state statute with a private right of action is functioning as a de facto national price on consumer facial recognition — judges willing to reject 'inadequate' settlements turn BIPA statutory exposure into the benchmark every face-tagging product must underwrite.
The trend: Illinois' Biometric Information Privacy Act is becoming the de facto national pricing mechanism for facial recognition, with judicial willingness to reject undersized settlements raising the floor.