Facebook coughs up $550m to make AI photo tagging lawsuit vanish. How ever will it survive on that $17.9bn left over?

Facebook will fork out more than a half-billion dollars to settle a class-action lawsuit against its facial recognition tech. The antisocial network revealed the agreement yesterday while announcing its 2019 financial figures [PDF], which also showed expenses for the Silicon Valley monster have risen sharply. "Finally, [ …

[johnfbw]

One weeks worth of quarterly income

Is that less than one weeks worth of annual income?

[diodesign]

Re: One weeks worth of quarterly income

Between 10 and 11 days of full-year profit, or a week of Q4 profit. Facebook banked $50.7m a day in full-year profit in 2019.

C.

[Chris G]

Facebook

Sooo, we haven't seen the back of them yet?

[IceC0ld]

Re: Facebook

Yet .......................

in their defence, they are helping by remaining as the biggest PITA on the block still :o)

[JohnFen]

What community?

> "We decided to pursue a settlement as it was in the best interest of our community and our shareholders to move past this matter,"

I understand that this is in the best interest of their shareholders, as losing the lawsuit would be even worse for business. But community? What community are they talking about here? It certainly can't be FB users.

[asdf]

Re: What community?

>It certainly can't be FB users.

The product will get over it (if they are still on there these days they obviously don't mind the personal data enema). Sadly they still take pictures of us that do.

[Snowy]

Re: What community?

Yes people not on Facebook do not even get asked if they mind being tagged into photo's, so where is there share on the pot for them?

[e^iπ+1=0]

Re: What community?

"Yes people not on Facebook do not even get asked if they mind being tagged into photo's"

Pics or it didn't happen.

[Anonymous Coward]

That mob

make the Mafia seem like a lunch money extortion bully.

[asdf]

Re: That mob

Move fast and break society.

[Anonymous Coward]

Zuckered.

A new term for being bought off or lied to.

[Dan 55]

Let that sink in

This is worth so much to Facebook that they'll pay over half a billion dollars to make it go away so they can carry on tagging.

[Anonymous Coward]

He really is a sociopath.. you get the impression he's constantly sort of staring off into the distance, right past the autonomous cell-collectives that identify as 'fellow human' and envisioning a world where the Facebook computers know so much about them, there's literally no point them existing independently, be far more efficient to just simulate them and recycle their biological matter into computing substrate and why doesn't everyone see how much sense that makes?

[Anonymous Coward]

If something is free...

...you are the product being sold.