Woah. Court just ruled to certify the class in lawsuit alleging Facebook sold ads based on inflated potential reach and then fraudulently covered it up. I'll link to more background on the case (and damning discovery) but first we have a few words from the federal judge. /1
Court does a nice job in a few sentences explaining Facebook told advertisers its "potential reach" in the US was 200 million people - note the word "people" is important - before they would narrow to a more targeted group leveraging Facebook's surveillance engine. /2
Facebook's (no, I won't call them Meta) lawyers first tried to suggest the class fails because it includes both small and large advertisers which went over like a lead balloon with this federal judge, errr "the objection is not well taken." /3
Court rules that the class is typical as all advertisers saw the same "potential reach estimates inflated by a similar percentage." /4
Court also ruled the class was adequate and the record hadn't found they didn't suffer a concrete injury among other reasons. Again, fail by Facebook. /5
In fact, the plaintiffs had claimed they would not have spent certain budget $ on Facebook if they knew the Potential reach was inaccurate. So this is a big deal. /6
Court even uses the "word" deceived to describe the effect on the plaintiffs. Keep that word in mind as we continue along this journey to use a word loved by Sheryl Sandberg. /7
In the key question of whether Facebook's inflated potential reach mislead advertisers, the Court rules Facebook doesn't disagree but "hurls a grab bag of challenges to plaintiffs' ability of proving an answer in their favor." Ouch. /8
Back to the word, "people," Court also notes Facebook doesn't dispute it originally described the inflated potential reach as "people" despite it representing "accounts" many of which were duplicate, fake, etc etc etc. /9
Here we get to the Court pointing to docs showing Facebook's knowledge (the fraud allegation) and that this metric was "the most important number in its ads creation interface" impacting budget plans and strategies. /10
And this line from Court speaks to Facebook's market power and antitrust cases also in various courts along with the necessity of class as no reasonable person (read as advertiser in this case) is likely to be able to pursue this lawsuit on their own against Facebook. /11
Bringing us to the order from the Court to certify the class in both the common law fraud claims against Facebook and injunctive relied under the unfair competition law. This case will include millions of advertisers on Facebook. /12
ok, here is archived thread on this lawsuit. You should also know FB whistleblower filed related SEC complaint. FB's very top execs appeared to decide not to share at earnings (since it wouldn't hurt $ and ads biz unless advertisers knew! - yikes). /eof
It's time to call it. AI is built on a house of cards of intellectual property violations starting with Facebook which is starting to look a lot like a crime scene as held back discovery documents begin to be compelled and unsealed in court. /1
"what is the probability of getting arrested for using Torrents in the USA?" /2
"Is this LibGen?"
"We suspect some of our competitors are using it" /3
Rare weekend filing in the NdCal lawsuit that now includes allegations and evidence Facebook used torrenting with a massive pirated dataset to train LLaMA and only now is disclosing another 18,000 documents it failed to produce (now after Zuckerberg depo). Watch this space. 1/4
The pirated dataset allegations matter because Facebook would not only be pulling in tens of millions of copyrighted works but also seeding them for others to download. Allegations are this went to the top. 2/4
And here is where Facebook's going to have problems. Plaintiffs are now noting to the Judge - the same one in Facebook's record $700+ million privacy lawsuit - a familiar pattern of discovery abuse, gaslighting and delays. Same thing happened in DC Superior Court, too. 3/4
Woah. Sheryl Sandberg, former COO of Facebook, just sanctioned by Delaware judge for deleting emails ahead of trial this spring. This is the state pension shareholder case alleging the company overpaid the FTC and SEC in $5B+ settlements in order to protect Zuckerberg. /1
Long after the books had been inspected and many lawsuits had played out, it was disclosed last year she had a personal Gmail account under a pseudonym that may have been used for relevant communications. /2
The Judge here calls her a "high sophisticated individual." He probably doesn't know about the 2018 NYT report on how she carved out these issues in her Senate Intel testimony or how their lawyers were sanctioned on related discovery in California. /3
wow. This AI lawsuit against Facebook keeps getting worse as they reluctantly unseal documents on Court orders.
Check out this allegation. Not only two hrs before discovery cut-off but the Friday before we now know Mark Zuckerberg was deposed... /1
Here is the bit from the newly filed and now unsealed third amended complaint. Allegations here Facebook used torrenting to download a pirated dataset to train LLaMA thereby also "seeding" pirated content globally. This is a BFD. /2 storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…
In fact, it can be criminal so this count is in the third amended complaint and the state attorney general (hello, @AGRobBonta) should note these allegations here. As it relates to this case, it may also break their privilege claims since it alleged to further a crime. /3
wow. Upon Court order, incriminating exhibits were unsealed at 3:30am in an AI lawsuit against Meta. Once past a 'fake privilege,' it appears Zuckerberg approved the use of a highly controversial, pirated dataset.
Note OpenAI, too? AI companies with no ethics or guardrails. /1
Here they acknowledge risk in media coverage, and massive EU fines, if "we have used a dataset we know to be pirated." So then you ask yourself the question, did they actually know it was pirated and use it? I uploaded docs - . /2 storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…
To that question, here is how the internal project manager describes the dataset. Note the line (these are all my yellow highlights), "when sourced from copyrighted materials without the permission of copyright holders." /3
woah. This Friday? Too much moving on court dockets so I will surface for you. This matters, in this mega-Facebook case, as highly respected Chenault was Chairman of Facebook's board during its biggest scandals. WSJ reported he left board after disagreements with Zuckerberg. /1
Here is the report on his departure, it includes reports of disagreements with Peter Thiel, too, over elections policies and "clashes" over moderation policies.
Btw, highly relevant to the last 24hrs of news. /2 wsj.com/articles/chena…
Moving on, Zuckerberg has also been noticed for deposition after "alleged wrongdoing on a truly colossal scale." He was already deposed last month in Hawaii for 7hrs. I would expect SEC closely compares transcripts to their 2019 depo which @zamaan_qureshi managed to unseal. /3