Facebook says it will appeal a B.C. Supreme Court ruling that cleared the way for a class-action lawsuit launched by a Vancouver woman who says the social-media giant has breached its users' privacy.
Christopher Rhone, lawyer for plaintiff Deborah Louise Douez, says Facebook violated its members’ privacy by essentially turning them into brand ambassadors when they clicked the “like” button for a product or service.
“Facebook took (Douez’s) image and name, associated it with a product and posted it on her friend’s page – not in their newsfeed, but under a heading called ‘Sponsored Stories,’” Rhone told CTV Vancouver on Saturday.
Lawyers involved in the class-action lawsuit are now asking the court to force Facebook to contact every British Columbian user whose name and image has appeared in a “Sponsored Stories” ad.
Facebook says it plans on appealing the court ruling.
“This suit has no merit and we intend to pursue an immediate appeal of the court’s procedural rulings,” the company told The Canadian Press in an email on Friday.
According to B.C. Supreme Court Justice Susan Griffin, there is sufficient evidence to support the allegation made by Douez that a Facebook advertising product used the names and images of members without their permission.
"Given the almost infinite life and scope of Internet images and corresponding scale of harm caused by privacy breaches, B.C. residents have a significant interest in maintaining some means of policing privacy violations by multinational Internet or social-media service providers," Griffin said.
If Douez’s class-action lawsuit is successful, her lawyer says the amount of money each person will be entitled to will likely be a “nominal” amount.
The sponsored ad product -- which generated hundreds of millions of dollars for the social networking company in 2012 and 2013 -- is no longer available to advertisers, Facebook said.
With a report from CTV Vancouver’s Shannon Patterson
