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Courtroom Reverses for Facebook
Facebook parent company Meta has suffered two reverses at the hands of a US District Court, granting class action status to advertisers claiming the company inflated its audience metrics; and allowing to proceed a suit by non-users of Facebook in Illinois over storage of images of their faces.
Last Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge James Donato in the Northern District of California allowed two plaintiffs to go ahead with a lawsuit on behalf of a large number of firms using Facebook's Ad Manager or Power Editor to purchase ads on Facebook or Instagram from August 15th 2014 onwards. The dispute dates back to a complaint about exaggerating numbers made in August 2018 - this included statements by the Video Advertising Bureau that Facebook's estimates of audience reach in each state exceeded the states' total populations. Facebook seemed to have settled the claim in 2019, but it resurfaced nine months later when an amended filing claimed execs had known about the misrepresentations for years longer than previously admitted.
The social network had argued that campaign reach estimates were not guarantees and did not affect billing; and that the case should not constitute a class action for reasons including advertisers not having enough in common. As reported on www.mediapost.com , Donato has now rejected this, saying that 'regardless of size or buying power, Meta's customers saw similar representations by Meta about its advertising reach and programs', and that all advertisers were shown estimates inflated by a similar percentage.
Separately, on Thursday Donato ruled that Meta must face allegations that Facebook compiled faceprints of Illinois residents, without having a written data retention policy available on its site; although he rejected the notion that faceprints of Illinois non-users were collected without their consent, arguing that Facebook had no practical means of contacting non-users to obtain it. A class action complaint was brought in 2018 by Illinois resident Clayton Zellmer, alleging that the firm's face-tagging system violated the Illinois Biometric Privacy Act, which requires companies to obtain consent in order to collect residents' voiceprints, scans of facial geometry, retinal scans and other biometric data.
Until last November when it announced it would stop using face recognition tech altogether, Facebook had scanned photos uploaded by users to identify those shown, whether or not the people depicted were users of its platform. The company had attempted to have this case thrown out on the grounds that it 'does not create, save, or store templates for non-users who appear in photos'. It claimed: 'As a result, the face signatures derived from images of non-users like Mr. Zellmer cannot be - and are not - used to identify anyone'. Faced with the factually contradictory claims, Donato said last week that 'These are quintessential disputes of material facts that will require a trial to resolve'. The company faces a similar case in Texas.
A similar case brought on behalf of Facebook users was brought in 2015 and settled a year ago when a judge approved the company's offer of $650m, including 'at least' $345 for each of the class action's c.1.6m plaintiffs.
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