Consent case against Facebook flops: Judge says B.C. plaintiffs 'failed to establish any basis in fact'

An attempt at a class-action lawsuit against a social media giant has been dismissed by the Supreme Court of British Columbia.

An attempt at a class-action lawsuit against a social media giant has been dismissed by the Supreme Court of British Columbia.

Two plaintiffs tried to claim that Facebook misused call and text data at the expense of those who use its instant messaging program.

But Justice Ronald Skolrood wrote last week that the duo "failed to establish any basis in fact for the central allegation" about Facebook messenger.

In a ruling issued Thursday and posted online Monday, Skolrood summarized the plaintiffs' case as follows: "The plaintiffs allege that Facebook 'scraped,' i.e. extracted, call and text data from users of its applications for its own purposes and without the knowledge of the users."

According to court documents, the plaintiffs described Facebook's claim it was accessing contacts to "supply its friend recommendation algorithm" as a ruse, essentially.

Plaintiffs Christopher Chow and Elizabeth Chartrand said the company "deliberately employed secret workarounds" to collect data without informed consent from users "by exploiting the interaction between the messenger app and the Android OS."

In a claim not tested in court, they alleged data collected from users' calls between 2011 and 2017 included date and time, call length, the sender's and recipient's identities and whether a call was answered or missed. Chow and Chartrand also alleged the same data was collected from text messages, by exploiting a software vulnerability in the permission settings of the Android OS." Google later tweaked its operating system to change what information could be accessed, and what permission was required, they said.