Judge Skeptical About Claims Made in Facebook Privacy Class Action

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A federal judge is questioning the strength of Facebook users’ arguments in a class action lawsuit alleging the social networking website shared private user data with third parties.

U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria states that Facebook’s disclosures about how data is captured and used are “quite vague,” however, he also says the claims of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit are also relatively “bare.”

The judge in the Facebook privacy class action lawsuit points out that Facebook users have failed to mention what disclosures, if any, they saw when signing up for Facebook.

The response also includes statements claiming that the plaintiffs did not explain whether or not their accounts were indeed private.

The Facebook privacy class action lawsuit stated that the social media giant is allowing third party companies to access the personal data of millions of users without notifying those users.

The Facebook privacy class action lawsuit was filed after news broke of the Cambridge Analytica scandal that involved sharing the personal data from more than 87 million users of the platform. In that situation, a third-party developer of applications took that data and sold the information to Cambridge Analytica.

The data taken during that scandal was allegedly used to target voters in the 2016 election even though the 87 million Facebook members who had their data compromised did not know until after the fact.

The Facebook privacy class action lawsuit says that the defendants are responsible for their failure to prevent third parties from gaining access to and misusing the private data of platform users.

The lawsuit alleges violations of the Video Privacy Protection Act and the Stored Communications Act in addition to claims of breach of contract, invasion of privacy, and negligence.

However, Facebook states that all the claims should be dismissed in full since users don’t have the right standing to sue.

Their argument is based on the standard established in the 2016 Robins v. Spokeo case, in which it was determined that a plaintiff must show concrete injuries in order to sue.

According to the defense in the Facebook privacy class action lawsuit, the users referenced in the lawsuit all consented to allow a third-party developer to access their information and therefore did not suffer a concrete injury as required.

In response, however, the judge seemed to question whether or not consent provided by a user negates any and all privacy claims that could be brought by such a person.

The plaintiffs argue in this case that they did not provide consent for their information to be used. The judge also shared that the Stored Communications Act claims would be decided in the favor of the defense if the plaintiffs did consent.

Judge Chhabria invited the plaintiffs to amend their complaint, which they accepted. A hearing date has been set for sometime in May.

The plaintiffs in the Facebook privacy class action lawsuit are represented by Derek W. Loeser of Keller Rohrback LLP and Lesley E. Weaver of Bleichmar Fonti & Auld LLP.

The Facebook Privacy Class Action Lawsuit is In re: Facebook Inc. Consumer Privacy User Profile Litigation, Case No. 3:18-md-02843, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

UPDATE: On Sept. 9, 2019, a multidistrict litigation over Facebook’s alleged data harvesting scandal has been mostly preserved by a California federal judge who said Facebook’s argument that users shouldn’t expect privacy is “so wrong.”