Marketer’s Disabled Facebook Page Lawsuit Stalls

An Australian marketing company has run into a wall in a lawsuit attempting to get their disabled Facebook page back.

A California federal judge has denied the marketing company Stackla’s motion for a temporary restraining order against Facebook that would force the company to restore Stackla’s disabled Facebook page.

U.S. District Judge Phyllis J. Hamilton also recommended Facebook and Stackla try to resolve their claims before the next step in the litigation.

According to the original complaint, Stackla Inc. is a content-marketing company. Stackla’s “business is based on curating user content for their clients’ brand marketing campaigns.” To do so, says the company, Stackla relies almost exclusively on social media – Facebook and Instagram. Indeed, Facebook, with its billions of users exerts a “virtually monopolistic power” in this realm.

“Stackla’s platform enables its customers to query Facebook, Instagram, and other social media platforms to discover the most compelling public content that is being produced by consumers about the brands of Stackla’s customers,” states the complaint. “Once this content is identified by Stackla’s customers, Stackla curates the selected content by applying metadata, sorting the content, and staging the content for review by the client.”

Stackla says that, until recently, it was in good standing with Facebook. However, Stackla was allegedly purged from the social media site as a part of a “relentless scorched-earth approach” after the Cambridge Analytica scandal that broke in 2017.

Cambridge Analytica was a political consulting firm that was reportedly implicated in the exposure of raw data from 87 million Facebook users. That data was collected using a Facebook quiz, not only from the user who took the quiz, but from their friends as well.

Stackla contends that it is a “good actor” that “respects the rights of social media users.” However, the firm’s enterprise technology platform and application were disabled by Facebook, despite having their previous approval, as have other marketing firms.

According to the disabled Facebook page lawsuit, the social media behemoth knows that, in order to keep operating, Stackla must be able access to the Facebook and Instagram platforms. Deciding, “in their whim,” that Stackla was a company that did not provide a product, Facebook has disabled their access to their social media accounts.

“Each day that Defendants continue to deny Stackla access to the Facebook and Instagram platforms, Defendants are knowingly and irreparably harming Stackla as a going concern,” alleges the complaint. “Defendants are well aware that Stackla cannot deliver promised services to its clients by virtue of the Defendants’ denial of access, which will result in the termination of client agreements, loss of new clients, and loss of investor relationships and Stackla’s IPO. The situation will soon reach a tipping point where Stackla will no longer have the ability or means to operate at all.”

Stackla says that it urgently needs access to its disabled Facebook page or it will fold. Further, alleges the company, Facebook’s unilateral decision to shutter their account amounts to anticompetitive behavior.

For its part, Facebook says that it is simply enforcing the terms of its contract with Stackla that allows it to disable accounts at any time. Further, the company claims that it has received reports from a third party concerned about Stackla’s data collection practices.

Has your social media data been exposed to marketing companies? Tell us more in the comments below!

Stackla is represented by Jeffrey Eewu Tsai of DLA Piper.

The Disabled Facebook Page Lawsuit is Stackla Inc. v. Facebook Inc., et al., Case No. 4:19-cv-05849, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

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