A Rhode Island lawyer has filed a class action lawsuit against Facebook over their new “Instant Personalization” program on behalf of Derrick Rose of East Providence, Rhode Island. The suit is a bit questionable as the class action published on the lawyer’s website states “Facebook is abusing personal information for private profit”, although it’s pretty clear that Facebook is not directly profiting through the Instant Personalization program.

While this may simply be an attempt/stunt by Peter Wasylyk to gain national attention, there are legitimate concerns raised in the suit which effectively turn users’ complaints over the Instant Personalization program into legalese:

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island, alleges that Facebook’s “Instant Personalization” feature has violated users’ privacy rights and seeks to certify a national class of Facebook users.

The suit also states that “The activation of Instant Personalization and the sharing of information about users with unrelated third party websites violated users reasonable expectations of privacy”. While I’m a little bit skeptical of how this first class action against Facebook over the program will work out, since there are significant typos (parts of sentences missing) in the release on the lawyer’s homepage, I think it’s a sufficient statement.

Peter Wasylyk, who’s representing Derrick Rose, claims that Facebook has broken the law with their new program by violating users “reasonable expectations of privacy”. I have no idea how substantial a case something like this really is, as many of the suits we’ve seen in the past, which have resulted in some form of settlement, come from large firms.

While I’m not sure how the lawyer will argue that Facebook is using the Instant Personalization program for profit, it’s no doubt interesting to see the first suit over the program.

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