Lawsuit Against Facebook: 25,000 Users Join In The Campaign
As many as 25,000 users have joined a campaign against Facebook alleging the social media huge against violation of users’ privacy. The data defence activists challenged the social media giant in the Vienna court on Wednesday. They stated that they had zeroed down on the list of plaintiffs signing on to the action lawsuit.
The initiative was taken by an Austrian law student Max Schrems, who said, “We hoped for broad support, but the number… has exceeded my most optimistic expectations,” when he launched his class action last Thursday.
Schrems, 26, has engaged the public to help him take action adjacent to Facebook, a US-listed company which is worth $189 billion with 1.32 billion users across the globe. “With this huge number of participants, we have big footing to stop cribbing about privacy violations and actually take a stand against it,” said Schrems.
He additional said that he had to vehemently shut the list of plaintiffs because his legal team had to verify and apply each claim that Facebook users had stated. He also said that people can still register at www.fbclaim.com in case the class action expands later.
As per the Austrian law, even a group of people can transfer their financial claims to a single person, like in this case, Schrems. But the legal procedures are effectively run as a class action.
Schrems is said to be claiming damages of 500 euros ($667) per user for alleged data violations by Facebook, which also includes by aiding the US National Security Agency in running its Prism programme that oppressed the personal data of Facebook users and other web services as well.
Although Austrian law encourages data privacy, Schrems is also seeking prohibition under EU data protection law in the Vienna court. There is already a case registered by Schrems which is pending involving the social network at the European Court of Justice in Strasbourg, France.
Although Facebook, has declined comment on Schrems’s campaign, it has been in the past accused for violation of data protection laws. Just recently, the legality of a Facebook experiment on unwitting users in 2012, is under enquiry by the Britain’s data watchdog, in which it altered their feeds to see if any changes in the number of positive news they were shown had an influence on the positivity of their postings.
