B.C. Supreme Court Permits Woman’s Lawsuit against Facebook

This article was last updated on April 16, 2022

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B.C.’s Supreme Court has allowed a class-action lawsuit filed in 2012 against Facebook Inc. by a Vancouver woman, Debbie Douez, to go ahead for trial. According to the court documents, Douez claims that the social media giant misused her image by linking it with advertisements. She complained about Facebook’s “Sponsored Stories” feature, which the company uses to sell to third-party advertisers.

The Facebook feature shows a picture of users who have ‘liked’ a product or service to their friends for marketing purposes. According to Douez, she ‘liked’ a page called “Cool Entrepreneurs,” and her image with the caption “Debbie Douez likes Cool Entrepreneurs” started showing up in contacts’ feeds and right-hand sidebars. At the time of filing of lawsuit, Douez’s lawyer, Luciana Brasil, mentioned that “it’s like making a statement you like or use something, then appearing on a billboard without being told.” It was added that “Facebook is taking actions of the members in their Facebook environment, such as liking something, and translating that as giving an endorsement about products or services.” Brasil alleged that “even if you generally like something in the sense of affinity, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve agreed to appear in an endorsement for that product.”

According to the ruling of B.C. Supreme Court Justice, Susan Griffin, “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 multi-national internet or social media service providers.”