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Counsel for Facebook users are urging an appellate court to reject the company’s bid for an immediate appeal in a battle over fake ads on Meta.
In papers filed Monday with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, the users’ attorneys essentially say an appeal is premature, arguing that the dispute involves unresolved factual questions that should be addressed by a trial judge.
The papers come in a battle dating to 2021, when users including Oregon resident Christopher Calise alleged in a class-action complaint that they lost money after responding to phony ads on Facebook. Calise alleged that he was bilked out of around $49 after attempting to purchase a car-engine assembly kit advertised on the platform.
The complaint included claims that Meta failed to honor statements in its terms of service and community standards section. Meta allegedly promised in its terms of service to “take appropriate action” regarding harmful content, and allegedly said in the community standards section that it would remove fraudulent content.
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U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey White in the Northern District of California ruled in September that the allegations in the complaint, if true, could support claims the company broke its contract with users and violated its duty of good faith.
Meta then urged White to authorize an immediate appeal to the 9th Circuit, arguing that appellate judges should decide whether terms of service and “community standards” create a “legally enforceable obligation to combat purported scam advertisements.”
White granted Meta’s request, allowing the company to ask the 9th Circuit to review his ruling.
Meta did so last week, arguing that the outcome of the case could affect a wide swath of other companies.
“The fundamental question in this case is whether Meta can be held contractually liable for moderating (or not) content posted to Facebook by third parties,” the company argued in its petition.
“Given that there are hundreds of millions of Facebook users in the United States and literally billions of pieces of content posted to the site every day the answer to that question will have profound implications,” Meta says.
Those implications “will not be confined to Meta,” the company added.
Counsel for the consumers counters that an immediate appeal isn’t appropriate, writing that the dispute doesn’t “present the type of abstract legal issues” that lend themselves to appellate intervention before there’s been a trial.
Counsel adds that determining whether the terms of service and community standards impose enforceable obligations “requires factual and contextual inquiry beyond the face of the provisions themselves.”
The 9th Circuit hasn’t yet indicated when it will rule on Meta’s request.
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