Facebook Users Seek More Evidence in Email Privacy Class Action

Top Class Actions’s website and social media posts use affiliate links. If you make a purchase using such links, we may receive a commission, but it will not result in any additional charges to you. Please review our Affiliate Link Disclosure for more information.

Plaintiffs in a Facebook privacy class action lawsuit are seeking additional evidence from the social media giant.

The plaintiffs are demanding Facebook hand over more source code and documents than the company has already divulged, as well as configuration tables for certain databases.

They argue the additional discovery is necessary to fully reveal how Facebook allegedly uses data derived from the content of user’ messages.

In this Facebook privacy lawsuit originally filed more than two years ago, plaintiffs Matthew Campbell and Michael Hurley say Facebook allegedly scans users’ messages, seeking URLs.

When a URL is found in a message, Facebook allegedly increases the “Like” count for that URL, uses that data to generate recommendations, and shares the data with third parties so they can generate their own recommendations.

Facebook claims to have stopped the practices complained of.

However, the plaintiffs want proof, and they argue that the evidence they are now seeking would speak to that issue. And based on evidence already discovered and Facebook’s own admissions, they claim the company continues to intercept and log the contents of private messages.

The plaintiffs say that in selecting documents to be handed over, Facebook neglected to use certain highly relevant keywords in its searches. They also accuse Facebook of training its predictive software to exclude certain relevant documents from production.

Facebook has also refused to search the files of persons who may possess relevant documents, they say.

The plaintiffs argue that even though Facebook has agreed to produce documents related to the data structures it uses to track URLs in messages, divulging of the source code is necessary to establish the way in which Facebook uses those data structures.

They make the same argument for production of the configuration tables from three different Facebook databases, the names of which were redacted in the publicly available version of the plaintiffs’ motions.

Attempts by the parties to reach agreement on what further evidence should be produced have failed, the plaintiffs say.

Facebook has already produced its source code from September 2009 through December 2012.

Plaintiffs now seek newer Facebook source code from January 2013 through May 18, 2016, to make code from the entire Class period available.

The plaintiffs first sought class certification this past November. U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton certified the Class for the purposes of seeking an authoritative warning. But since not all Class Members were harmed in the same way, Judge Hamilton said they would have to seek damage awards individually.

Campbell and Hurley sought certification for a Class consisting of all U.S. Facebook users who sent or received Facebook messages with a URL in the message, from which Facebook generated a URL attachment.

Counsel for the plaintiffs and the Class are attorneys Michael W. Sobol, David T. Rudolph, Melissa Gardner, Rachel Geman and Nicholas Diamand of Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein LLP; and Hank Bates, Allen Carney and David Slade of Carney Bates & Pulliam PLLC.

The Facebook Message Privacy Class Action Lawsuit is Matthew Campbell, et al. v. Facebook Inc., Case No. 4:13-cv-05996, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

UPDATE: On March 1, 2017, Facebook agreed to settle this class action lawsuit. Under the terms of the proposed settlement, the social networking giant will not offer monetary compensation to Class Members, but it has agreed to stop using Facebook users’ private message data for targeted advertising purposes.

UPDATE 2: On March 3, 2020, an objection claiming that the Facebook privacy class action provided only “worthless injunctive relief” was rejected by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.