A man from Georgia who sued Facebook for denying him access to his personal account has won, according to Fox 5 Atlanta.
Jason Crawford, a lawyer, sued Facebook’s parent company, Meta Platforms, in August 2022 after he was locked out from his personal social media account.
Crawford told Fox 5 that Facebook cited its reasoning for suspending his account for a violation of the platform’s community standards on child sexual exploitation.
“I woke up one Sunday morning. I tapped on my Facebook icon, and I was locked out…It just gave me the briefest snapshot of saying that I had violated their standards on child sexual exploitation. And then it went away,” he explained.
Crawford sued the company after learning that the only way to submit an appeal is through an active account.
In his lawsuit against the tech giant filed in the State Court of Muscogee County, Crawford argues, “Facebook was negligent and violated its own rules in suspending” his account.
Crawford further argues in the suit that he “engaged in no such activity, in violation of Facebook’s community standards or otherwise,” adding he is “unsure whether his account was hacked or whether Facebook’s computer algorithms committed an error in some way.”
He further pointed out that his account has “valuable materials, photographs, narrative content, and communication channels” that he has been deprived from accessing, “based on a violation that did not occur.”
Despite filing his lawsuit against the tech giant, according to Fox 5, Facebook’s legal team did not respond, leading to a judge ordering Meta to pay Crawford $50,000.
Following the judge’s order, a Facebook attorney called Crawford and told him that his account had been hacked, thus leading to its permanent suspension. Crawford’s account has since been activated.
However, as Crawford told Fox 5, the company has not cooperated with the judge’s order and has not issued any payment yet to him.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Georgia Star News and The Star News Network.
Photo “Meta Headquarters” by Nokia621. CC BY-SA 4.0.
