The bigger they are, the harder they fall—and Facebook is going to make a pretty big boom. The original social media giant has just been slammed with a class-action lawsuit, which claims that the network scans and monitors the private messages of users—and then sells that data to advertisers.
Aaaargh
The lawsuit was brought about on behalf of all Facebook users by Arkansas user Matthew Campbell and Oregon user Michael Hurley, who cite “independent research” which claims that Facebook records links sent from one user to another through private messaging. These links are then recorded on a web activity profile of the sender, which Facebook then uses to guide web developers and advertisers towards clientele.
Facebook has never made its data-mining policies a secret, but before this point private messages were considered by most to be actually private. Filed with the US district court of Northern California, the suit states that Facebook '
is violating the Electronic Communications Privacy Act by scanning and essentially selling messages they bill as private.
“Representing to users that the content of Facebook messages is “private” creates an especially profitable opportunity for Facebook because users who believe they are communicating on a service free from surveillance are likely to reveal facts about themselves that they would not reveal had they known the content was being monitored,” claims the suit according to FT.
Campbell and Hurley are spearing the class-action for all users who have sent links through private messaging, which is a very high number—how many times have you alone sent a webpage to a friend through Facebook? Not only do they monitor and collect those links to “guide” advertisers, but they also use them to contribute to the “like” count of a Facebook fan page, say for a band or company. Their suit is claiming either a $100 a day for each day of alleged violation or $10,000 for each user affected—which would probably drain even Facebook’s bank, because pretty much all of their users are going to be affected.
This is the first lawsuit Facebook is facing that deals with this issue, though with its penchant for changing the rules of its service on a whim this is certainly not the first time its faced criticism about privacy. We all remember the fiasco when Facebook changed their policies to allow them to use user images and names for advertising, without so much as a word to users. The over 166 million Facebook users, including me and you, have been subjected to several questionable privacy policies adopted by the network.
According to a statement told to Bloomberg, Facebook is claiming that the accusations in the suit are “without merit,” and is planning to fight against it. While I don’t think this is going to severely damage the network, let’s hope this lawsuit at least leads to better electronic privacy laws and standards.
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