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Meta lawsuit overview:
- Who: Meta Platforms Inc. sued artificial intelligence company Voyager Labs Ltd.
- Why: Voyager allegedly created fake Facebook accounts to illicitly scrape and sell other users’ data.
- Where: The Meta lawsuit was filed in California federal court.
Meta Platforms Inc. filed a data scraping lawsuit against artificial intelligence company Voyager Labs Ltd. over claims Voyager sells Facebook users’ data to its clients.
The Meta lawsuit alleges Voyager created more than 38,000 fake Facebook accounts and utilized unauthorized means to “scrape” data from more than 600,000 Facebook users.
“Scraping is a form of data collection that relies on unauthorized automation for the purpose of extracting data from a website or app,” the Meta lawsuit explains.
Voyager designed the scraping software to conceal its presence from Meta and subsequently sold and licensed the stolen data for profit, according to the data scraping lawsuit.
The AI company reportedly marketed the scraping software to clients seeking to conduct secret surveillance on social media sites. The Meta lawsuit states that Voyager’s marketing materials tout that its “unique collection methods enable traceless collection from social media networks.”
Voyager allegedly began creating fake usernames in June 2020 and started to build a computer infrastructure that would allow these fake accounts to scrape other users’ data, the data scraping lawsuit alleges.
“Defendant’s fake accounts generally had no friends, no followers, did not include profile information such as hometown or city, and engaged in unauthorized automated activity on defendant’s behalf,” according to the lawsuit.
Voyager violated terms of service and California law, Meta lawsuit claims
Meta operates several popular social media sites, including Facebook and Instagram. The Meta lawsuit notes that there are an average of 1.98 billion daily active Facebook users.
Meta provides Facebook and Instagram users with the ability to control the information they share in their profiles and how much information is viewable to others. Users can change their privacy settings at any time.
Voyager agreed to and was bound by the terms of Facebook and Instagram because it created and controlled one or more Facebook and Instagram accounts, Facebook Pages, Business Manager accounts and apps, the Meta lawsuit states.
However, Voyager utilized automated means to scrape user data from Facebook and Instagram without permission, Meta alleges. This conduct allegedly violates Meta’s terms of service and California law.
Meta notes that it has taken multiple enforcement actions against Voyager since 2017, including disabling accounts and sending a cease and desist letter.
Meta recently won $365,000 from Hong Kong social media company Social Data Trading Ltd. in a similar lawsuit accusing the company of illicitly scraping data from users’ profiles.
What do you think about the allegations in the data scraping lawsuit? Join the discussion in the comments.
Meta is represented by Kalpana Srininvasan, Oleg Elkhunovich, Michael Gervais, Lear Jiang and Chanler Langham of Susman Godfrey LLP.
The Meta lawsuit is Meta Platforms Inc. v. Voyager Labs Ltd., Case No. 3:23-cv-00154, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Francisco/Oakland Division.
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