A lawsuit filed by a British Columbia woman against Facebook for using images without consent may be expanded to include other similar cases, after a B.C. court ruling.
Cases that may be included will be from people residing in Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Newfoundland.
Deborah Douez filed the lawsuit after learning that the social media giant used the pictures of her and others in the “sponsored stories” advertising feature, which no longer exists.
If a user liked a product under the advertising feature, their name and photo were used in a news feed endorsement. Facebook did not notify the user it used their photo.
Facebook went to the Supreme Court of Canada arguing against the certification of the class action but lost.
Following the court ruling, Facebook now has to give up any profit it made by using the photos and names of the members of the class-action lawsuit.
The ruling judge, Justice Nitya Iyer, said that if the members of the class-action wanted damages, she would have sided with Facebook. However, she outlined that forgoing profit is a solution to cases like this under the privacy laws of the respective provinces.
Source: CBC
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