Social-Media
The Supreme Court will hear the case of Facebook robocalling
The Supreme Court agreed to hear Facebook's defense after the appeals court found that it had violated anti-robocalling rules. The court will examine whether Facebook's automated alert text counts as a "automatic telephone dialing system" that provides a clearer definition of illegal phone spam.
Facebook was sued in 2015 by non-Facebook user Noah Duguid, who alleged that he had received unwanted text messages from the site. The alerts told Duguid that someone was trying to access his non-existent Facebook account, and he couldn't get Facebook to stop sending them.
Duguid claimed that Facebook had violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, which is meant to shield Americans from inappropriate self-dialed calls.
Facebook claimed that the texts were sent wrongly and that its automation system was identical in operation to a normal smartphone, so that a decision that daily phone calls would be illegal against it. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed with this logic and stated that Facebook's texts clearly fall within the category of "automated, unsolicited and unwanted" telephone messages. The Supreme Court must resolve the matter for good.
This case supplements a new rubocalling decision by the Supreme Court. The court overturned the government debt collectors legal exception earlier this week, sidestepping an attempt to strike out the bans. In its petition, Facebook raised a similar problem, but the Court will instead focus on the definition issue.
When Facebook ultimately loses its case, any user who receives unwanted messages could be forced to pay damages within a number of years. The decision of the Supreme Court may also impact what is deemed permissible in automated calls. However, robocalls are rampant irrespective of the law against them – so many people might not be greatly affected.
