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Facebook advertising practices have come into question in a new class action lawsuit alleging that the social media company allows fake accounts and invalid clicks to exist so that they can charge advertisers more for ads.
Plaintiff William Doshier filed the Facebook class action lawsuit in Arkansas state court in July. The case was removed to federal court on Sept. 4.
The Facebook class action lawsuit challenges Facebook’s advertising practices, stating that the social media giant wrongfully charges for invalid clicks on advertisements.
Doshier, seeking to increase exposure for his business, says he built a business page on Facebook for dotStrategy. He created advertisements by “boosting” posts on his business page.
These self-serve ads are often paid per click. However, Doshier claims that he was wrongfully charged for invalid clicks from fake accounts. He then reached out to Facebook to have his ad billing reviewed, but the Facebook advertising team allegedly did not follow through.
According to the Facebook ads class action lawsuit, the company knows it has a problem with fake accounts. Doshier references a June 2018 Wall Street Journal article which states that Facebook has implemented new tools in an attempt to “make it easier to identify fake pages.”
Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg reportedly made a statement, saying: “By far the most important action we are taking is going after fake accounts […] Transparency helps us find and fix problems.”
Fake accounts can allegedly cause serious financial burden to advertisers, as seen in Doshier’s situation. Facebook claims that it prevents invalid clicks in order to make sure that advertisers are not charged for them. However, Facebook’s self-serve ad terms state that the social media site cannot control how clicks are generated and is not responsible for “click fraud, technological issues, or other potentially invalid click activity that may affect the cost of running ads.”
The Facebook ad clicks class action lawsuit claims that the Facebook advertising team tells advertisers it will prevent fraudulent clicks when, in reality, they allow invalid clicks to occur to boost their own revenue. Invalid clicks allegedly allow Facebook advertising to charge businesses large amounts in advertisement fees, which the social media giant takes advantage of.
“Unfortunately, FACEBOOK’s new tools roll out ‘to make it easier to identify fake pages’ is simply subterfuge on the part of FACEBOOK, which will allow it to continue to generate substantial and fraudulent ad revenue through invalid ‘clicks generated through … fake accounts,’” the Facebook advertising class action lawsuit claims.
To support his allegations, Doshier references Facebook’s available tools which could help eliminate fake accounts and invalid clicks. Facebook reportedly has the software coding capability to implement artificial intelligence which could detect and filter fake accounts. Because fake accounts and invalid clicks still exist and cause trouble for advertisers, Doshier claims that Facebook must not be implementing its available technology to protect its consumers.
Doshier seeks to represent a Class of consumers who used self-serve Facebook advertising to promote their page and were then charged for invalid clicks.
The Facebook advertising class action seeks actual damages, compensatory damages, consequential damages, statutory damages, treble damages, punitive damages, restitution, disgorgement, court costs, and attorneys’ fees.
The plaintiff is represented by David A. Hodges.
The Facebook Advertising Invalid Clicks Class Action Lawsuit is Doshier, et al. v. Facebook Inc., Case No. 4:18-cv-00628-KGB, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas.
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161 thoughts onFacebook Advertising Class Action Lawsuit Challenges Ad Click Rates
Well this is interesting. I’m a software developer since the mid 90’s. As a hobby I created a free 5 letter word game. For fun, with all the buzz over Wordle, I decided to promote it on Facebook. Remember, I’m a nobody, unknown, and just bought the domain 2 days ago. So there is no case here for adversaries trying to deplete my ad budget. In just a single day, day 1, I got 435 clicks while using my own tracking api, along with Google analytics, accurately report just 30 clicks and half of those weren’t even from Facebook.
So this isn’t a matter of fake accounts, it’s a matter of fraudulent fake data. The campaign is targeting Philippines so the daily experiment is only $5 a day. I’m continuing the campaign for now to collect more evidence.
Please add me. I have tried to purchase thousands of dollars of merchandise and have received either nothing, or items I would have no way ordered.
How can I be added to this lawsuit? Mysterious FB charges coming out of my bank account since July. FB claims I authorized an ad purchase at some point and the info was retained. Changed my card and it is STILL HAPPENING! confirmed it is no one in my family! Over $ 200 charged at this point, FB refuses to help. Sends the same canned response every time about checking with friends and family.
The Class will ultimately lose. I’ve read the entire case and there is something so glaring that they over looked that its almost embarrassing: REAL, ABANDONED ACCOUNTS. I was getting tons of ‘fake’ traffic from FB. So much so that I closed my online store and abandoned my Ads Manager account. But it wasn’t from ‘fake’ profiles. Some was. But just as much was from REAL profiles, but real profiles that didn’t have any activity on them for 2, 3, 5 or even 7 years. And had clearly been highjacked. This suit goes all in in the idea of traffic coming from fake profiles. They browbeat Facebook repeatedly over the number of fake profiles. But what they completely whiff on is the fact that there are millions and millions of abandoned profiles on FB. Profiles that are ripe for highjacking. Highjacking that goes totally unnoticed since the people that abandoned them turned off notifications years ago. We all know that FB makes it almost impossible to completely delete a profile. So there are untold millions (probably tens of millions or more) profiles on FB that have sat idle for years. They are probably very easy to query en masse. They are undoubtedly very easy to hack, given how regularly ACTIVE profiles get hacked. My very modest FB business page has gotten thousands of likes from profiles that were clearly active and legit at one time, but show no signs of activity for years. Do I think FB is aware and accommodating of click fraud across its platform. Absolutely 150% yes. Methbot alone gave them tens to hundreds of millions of free dollars in ad revenue. Do I think that FB is aware that this click fraud is exploiting both the fake accounts and the highjacked abandoned accounts? Absolutely 150% yes. Their policy of making it so difficult to delete profiles leaves the door wide open for this kind of fraud. It would almost appear that this policy exists for this exact purpose. But the lawsuit never makes mention of it at all. And thus leaves the door open for FB to use this excuse to skate to victory. Which is exactly what will happen.
Its on the plaintiff to prove case for case that any and all suspect accounts 1) are in fact fake, 2) that FB knew they were fake and took no action, and 3) these exact accounts directly committed fraudulent clicks that directly and specifically impacted the plaintiffs themselves. That’s a high bar. On the flip side all FB can easily cherry pick the many accounts that are (or were at some point) legit and say “Nope, these are real accounts. Here’s proof” and its game over. They’ll never even have to address the fact that they may be highjacked because the idiot lawyers never addressed this topic in any of their allegations. They instead assert only that this fraud comes from fake accounts. Which I can tell you for a fact is not the case.
Facebook is a behemoth. You’re going to have to bring your A+ game to best them in court given the breadth and scope of their influence and money. These amateurs brought a feather to a gunfight and will definitely lose. And that’s a huge shame given that nobody who advertises on FB isn’t wholly convinced that these charges are true. I’ve definitely been harmed in this same way. But I have no desire to join this class and waive my rights to further pursue these allegations against FB in the future. Because this case is as good as lost.
Please ad me I have been scammed out of 600.00 so far and no merchandise. I dont see how they get away with it. Unfare
What if there is evidence of Facebook charging for clicks, that never occurred? Would that change things? I don’t mean a discrepancy of 5%, but we’re talking about off by a factor of 20 times over. Even a fake account will appear in analytics click tracking. These are charges that don’t come from accounts period! Fake or real.
add me too
facebook charg 2 set accout and i never bought anything !
please add me, they never respond to me regarding false ad charges amounting to $244, i am sick of seeing this phoney bill everytime i log on! I know they never ran an ad
I have been running ads with facebook and targeted audience. I will get link clicks on people from out of the country which is not part of my target audience. Also, all of my ads have been approved by facebook and then a few weeks later, they will deactivate my account without reasonable explanation after they have collected all my money.
Please add me