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Facebook last week urged a federal judge in California to deny some U.K. users from joining the U.S. multidistrict lawsuit over the Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal.
Facebook claims U.K. users have already agreed to serve claims against the social media platform elsewhere.
Facebook has come to a $550 million settlement with Illinois users who claim that the social media platform has breached Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act. The Facebook lawsuit alleges the company has been violating users’ privacy by using facial recognition in photos without consent.
Some Facebook users, including two users from the U.K., have filed a motion in the Facebook privacy scandal lawsuit to bring in some new plaintiffs with an amended grievance, but the social media company has called this appeal “futile and improper” for several reasons.
“Plaintiffs’ motion for leave to amend their complaint seeks to turn this multidistrict litigation into multi-country litigation by adding two named plaintiffs who are citizens and residents of the United Kingdom,” the social media giant stated in dispute of the Facebook lawsuit. It also adds: “As a practical matter, allowing the U.K. Plaintiffs to join this case would vastly complicate, and likely delay, every aspect of discovery in this case, all so they could pursue claims on which they have no chance of recovery. The time to close the door on their claims is now.”
The consolidated multidistrict litigation contends Facebook privacy violations disobeyed many laws by divulging social media users’ exclusive information to tens of thousands of app creators and Facebook’s business partners.
The Facebook lawsuit’s supposed information breach includes users’ photos, religious background, video-watching preferences, relationships, private messages and location information.
The accusations stem from the March 2018 Facebook privacy scandal that showed 87 million users had information taken from them and sold to Cambridge Analytica by a third-party app developer.
According to BBC News, about 1.1 million of these were in the U.K. and the original overall number of Facebook users targeted was only 50 million, as quoted by whistleblower Christopher Wylie.
“Clearly we should have done more, and we will going forward,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said regarding the March 2018 privacy breach.
A Canadian Facebook lawsuit has been settled recently; the company agreed to pay $6.5 million to pacify claims the social media platform has once again deceived users about third-party access to personal data.
In April, another Facebook lawsuit between the social media giant and the Federal Trade Commission reached a $5 billion settlement over the company’s personal data practices. The FTC had begun the examination in 2018 in part due to the Cambridge Analytica allegations.
In the June 2 motion, Facebook stated it revised its terms of service in April 2018 for all European users. Facebook also declared the prospective plaintiffs have already agreed to the terms, which would disallow Facebook users in the U.K. from bringing claims against the company in U.S. courts, by virtue of the forum-selection clause.
The U.K. plaintiffs assert they joined Facebook prior to April 2018, and the terms of service in 2018 “supersede any prior agreements” between Facebook and its users, the company argues.
The claims of the U.K. users are also hindered by “choice-of-law clauses in the contracts they entered into with Facebook,” according to the company.
“The doctrine of international comity also counsels in favor of dismissal,” Facebook stated. “And the U.K. plaintiffs lack standing to pursue many of their claims. … Any attempt by the U.K. plaintiffs to represent a class of Facebook users who live in the U.K. would run afoul of the Due Process Clause and the Rules Enabling Act.”
Do Facebook’s personal data lawsuits change how you use social media? Do you think they’ve violated basic privacy rights? Let us know in the comments.
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