Twitter Class Action Challenges Promoted Tweet Click Rates

A class action lawsuit alleging that Twitter knowingly charges advertisers for traffic from fraudulent accounts was removed to federal court last week.

Plaintiff William F. Doshier filed the class action lawsuit against Twitter Inc. over claims that the social media platform charges advertisers for “clicks” from fake accounts.

Twitter is allegedly rife with fake accounts. A Washington Post article from July reported that Twitter suspended “more than 70 million” fake accounts in May and June.

The Twitter class action estimates that the company has suspended a total of 128 million fake accounts since the last quarter of 2017. Despite suspending millions of fake accounts, Twitter allegedly still struggles with fake accounts and the impacts they have on valid users.

“Twitter knows, and has known that it has, and has had, a rampant fake account problem,” the Twitter fake account class action lawsuit claims. “There is no accountability at Twitter to Self-serve Advertisers, such as Doshier and Class members.”

Fake accounts can pose a serious problem to advertisers such as Doshier who rely on traffic from accounts to draw interest to their businesses. These advertisers advertise through Twitter by paying per engagement.

“Only pay when [REAL] users follow your account or retweet, like, reply, or click on your Promoted Tweet. You’re in complete control. There’s no minimum spend, and you can start and stop at any time,” Twitter says of its advertising program.

Doshier claims that he and other advertisers are having to pay for ad traffic from fake accounts, “but without transparency and accountability from Twitter” they are unable to investigate the issue.

The Twitter class action claims that the social media site knows that its advertisement engagement is skewed by fake accounts but fails to act on this fact in order to generate more income from advertisers.

“Twitter has inflated and continues to inflate the price to advertise on the Twitter platform as a result of fake Impressions, either out of its unwillingness or inability to stem the proliferation of fake Twitter accounts,” the Twitter class action lawsuit claims.

Doshier requests that the court allow him to review the ads he has posted on twitter to determine what percentage of his engagements were generated by fake accounts. Should he find that he has been charged for fake account engagements, he requests that Twitter reimburse him for the costs of those fake engagements.

Doshier is the plaintiff in a similar fake account class action lawsuit against Facebook over ad click rates filed in Arkansas federal court.

Doshier seeks to represent a Class of individuals who entered into self-service advertising agreements with Twitter Inc. and were subsequently charged for engagements generated by fake accounts.

The Twitter fake account class action lawsuit seeks compensatory damages, statutory damages, punitive damages, treble damages, restitution, disgorgement, court costs, and attorneys’ fees.

The plaintiff is represented by David A. Hodges of The David Hodges Law Firm.

The Twitter Fake Account Class Action Lawsuit is Doshier v. Twitter Inc., Case No. 4:18-cv-00700-KGB, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas.