Judge James Donato Finds Facebook Guilty Of Deceiving Advertisers With "Potential Reach" Tool

JAKARTA – A US court judge ruled on Tuesday, March 29, that a lawsuit accusing Meta Platforms Inc.'s Facebook of defrauding advertisers of its "potential reach" tool could proceed as a clash action lawsuit.

The decision by US District Judge James Donato in San Francisco also allowed millions of individuals and businesses to potentially pay for advertising on Facebook and the photo-sharing app Instagram since August 15, 2014, to sue as a community group.

Responding to the decision itself, until now Meta did not immediately provide a comment when contacted by various media.

The lawsuit began in 2018 when DZ Reserve and other advertisers accused Facebook of inflating the reach of its ads, increasing its potential audience by 400%, and charging exorbitant premiums for ad placement.

They also said senior Facebook executives knew for years that the company's "potential reach" metric was inflated by duplicate and fake accounts. But they did nothing and took steps to cover it up.

After citing Meta's "blunderbuss" objection to class certification, Donato dismissed the notion that the class was too diverse. Including "large sophisticated corporations" as well as individuals and small businesses, and it would be too difficult to quantify the damage.

Donato, Reuters reported, also said it was reasonable to let the individual plaintiffs sue as a group, given that "no reasonable person" would sue Meta individually to recover at most $32 in premiums.