US judge rules Meta hid evidence in Australian tycoon fake ad case

SAN FRANCISCO, UNITED STATES: A federal judge in California ruled against Meta on Monday for destroying evidence in a case brought by Australian billionaire Andrew Forrest over scam ads using his likeness without permission.

The mining tycoon has accused the social media giant of allowing ads using his image to promote bogus cryptocurrency investments, and says Meta actively modifies the ads it distributes and profits from them.

That behaviour makes the company liable for the fraudulent content, Forrest's lawyers say.

In his ruling, seen by AFP, Judge P Casey Pitts found that Meta did destroy or allow essential data to be erased, causing harm to the plaintiff.

Meta argued it needed two years to discover the existence of the data in its own systems, a claim the judge called "simply not credible".

"It is not reasonable to assert that Meta itself needed two years to learn about its own data," Pitts said.

The judge did not, however, find intent to cause harm, instead calling Meta's conduct "gross negligence".

Meta has said it is protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a 1996 law that shields internet firms from being held accountable for content posted by users on their platforms.

By RSS/AFP

The destroyed data is central to Forrest's legal strategy as it would purportedly show how Meta's own tools reshaped the ads, thus forfeiting the company's immunity claims.

The case is still in its preliminary hearing phase, and Meta is expected to seek to have the case thrown out on immunity grounds at a hearing before Pitts, expected to be held by the end of the year.

Since 2019, thousands of deceptive advertisements on Facebook have used the likeness of the highly prominent figure in Australia to promote scams, affecting thousands of victims, according to the suit.

The billionaire's legal team argues that Meta's artificial intelligence tools optimised and personalised fraudulent ads before distributing them, thereby making Meta an active participant, rather than a mere intermediary.

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has already ruled that Section 230 does not protect Meta from the state's lawsuit concerning Instagram's design being addictive to children.

That represents a legal setback for the Facebook and Instagram owner, which has also been found liable for harming minors on its platforms by juries in Los Angeles and Santa Fe, New Mexico, this year.