Meta, the American multinational social media giant that caused consternation around the world after it recently decided to overhaul its content moderation and fact-checking policies, has discreetly agreed to pay $9 million to settle a Quebec class action that alleged Facebook violated the privacy rights of users by providing access to their personal and private information to third parties without their consent.
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The class action alleges that Facebook entered into “secretive” agreements with 150 or more third parties or data partners and provided them with intrusive access to Facebook users’ personal data. These companies included major technology firms, media organizations, online retailers, automobile vendors, and over sixty device manufacturers. The class action alleges that the likes of Amazon, Apple, Huawei, Lenovo, Microsoft, Netflix, Pandora, Royal Bank of Canada, Samsung, Spotify, Yahoo, Sony, and TCL obtained direct internal access to “troves of its users’ personal data” and acted in a manner that effectively exempted them from Facebook’s usual privacy policies, despite class members’ privacy settings. Facebook gave Netflix, the Royal Bank of Canada, and Spotify the ability to read, write, and delete the private messages exchanged between Facebook users, alleges the class action. It also allegedly gave Sony, Microsoft, Amazon, and others access to Facebook users’ private contact information through their friends’ profiles. Facebook also allegedly gave Apple access to users’ contact numbers and calendar entries, even when they had changed their account settings to disable all sharing, and gave Apple the ability to hide all indicators that its devices were asking for data. In exchange, the class action alleges, Facebook was able to profit and grow its company by receiving access to user data collected by those partner companies, bringing new users in through these third parties’ networks, using the data to develop and improve features of its own products, and using the data to increase engagement and user activity, all of which increased Facebook’s own advertising revenue. The class action alleges that Quebec users’ rights to privacy and to the non-disclosure of confidential information were violated under the Charter of human rights and freedoms. It also alleges that Facebook breached its contractual obligations toward class members, violated provisions of the Quebec Consumer Protection Act, failed to meet its obligations under the Civil Code of Quebec, and “defied” the Act respecting the protection of personal information in the private sector, all of which inform the scope and content of its obligations under the Charter. The class action was brought on behalf of all persons in Quebec who had a Facebook account from July 27, 2012, to the present. The proposed agreement, which will be presented for approval to Quebec Superior Court on February 11, 2025, provides that the $9 million sum — minus the plaintiff’s attorneys’ fees of 25 per cent plus taxes — will be used to fund research and teaching activities to promote and protect privacy rights in Quebec at public universities, according to class action plaintiff Montreal law firm Trudel Johnston & Lespérance LLP. The monies will be distributed equally between the Université du Québec à Montréal, Concordia University and Université Laval. The settlement does not include an admission of liability by Meta, who owns and operates Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp. In 2019, Facebook agreed to pay a $5 billion penalty to settle a complaint brought by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) alleging that Facebook had misrepresented the extent to which users could control the privacy of their data. In the meantime, Apple has agreed to pay US consumers US$95 million to settle a class action that alleged that it shared private conversations captured without consent by its Siri voice assistant. An identical class action was launched in Quebec against Apple Canada’s subsidiary.
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