Facebook has reached an agreement with some plaintiffs to pay them 40 million dollars. The lawsuit accuses the social network of inflating page numbers and then demanding advertising payments.
On Friday, several ad agencies released the details of a proposed deal with Facebook. This ends a class action lawsuit alleging that the social media giant exaggerated the time its users spent watching videos.
According to a report in support of the settlement, Facebook would pay $ 40 million to settle claims. Much of that would go to those who bought video ad time, though 12 million, or 30 percent of the settlement fund, goes to the plaintiffs' attorneys.
The suit accused Facebook of admitting miscalculations in metrics in press reports. “Average audience metrics were not just inflated by 60% to 80%; they were inflated by 150% to 900%,” one plaintiff said.
Metrics with deception in the social network
Faced with accusations of violating the law of unfair competition, breaching the contract and committing fraud, Facebook denied these accusations. In the early rounds of the trial, Facebook managed to get the judge to stop the claims, although until a settlement was announced, several of the claims, including fraud, were still outstanding. Even after agreeing to pay $ 40 million for the deal, Facebook maintains that the lawsuit is pointless.
The plaintiffs estimate that if they had gone to trial, they could have recovered between $100 million and $200 million in damages, although they also emphasized to U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey White the uncertainty of this outcome, as well as the costly process. This is yet another illegality they acknowledge, one of the many they are accused of . This could have caused serious problems for pages that bet everything on Facebook, only to end up with businesses too reliant on the platform to operate independently.
Source: Hollywood Reporter
