How small claims court became Meta's customer service hotline
Frustrated Facebook and Instagram users are heading to small claims court in a last-ditch attempt to get help from Meta.
www.engadget.com
Angelica Alzona for Engadget
How small claims court became Meta's customer service hotline
People are using the courts in a last-ditch attempt to recover their accounts.
karissa bell
Senior Editor
Thu, Jun 20, 2024, 12:02 PM EDT·13 min read
Last month, Ray Palena boarded a plane from New Jersey to California to appear in court. He found himself engaged in a legal dispute against one of the largest corporations in the world, and improbably, the venue for their David-versus-Goliath showdown would be San Mateo's small claims court.
Over the course of eight months and an estimated $700 (mostly in travel expenses), he was able to claw back what all other methods had failed to render: his personal Facebook account.
Those may be extraordinary lengths to regain a digital profile with no relation to its owner's livelihood, Palena is one of a growing number of frustrated users of Meta's services who, unable to get help from an actual human through normal channels of recourse, are using the court system instead. And in many cases, it's working.
Engadget spoke with five individuals who have sued Meta in small claims court over the last two years in four different states. In three cases, the plaintiffs were able to restore access to at least one lost account. One person was also able to win financial damages and another reached a cash settlement. Two cases were dismissed. In every case, the plaintiffs were at least able to get the attention of Meta’s legal team, which appears to have something of a playbook for handling these claims.
Why small claims?
At the heart of these cases is the fact that Meta lacks the necessary volume of human customer service workers to assist those who lose their accounts. The company’s official help pages steer users who have been hacked toward confusing automated tools that often lead users to dead-end links or emails that don’t work if your account information has been changed. (The company recently launched a $14.99-per-month program, Meta Verified, which grants access to human customer support. Its track record as a means of recovering hacked accounts after the fact has been spotty at best, according to anecdotal descriptions.)Hundreds of thousands of people also turn to their state Attorney General’s office as some state AGs have made requests on users’ behalf — on Reddit, this is known as the “AG method.” But attorneys general across the country have been so inundated with these requests they formally asked Meta to fix their customer service, too. “We refuse to operate as the customer service representatives of your company,” a coalition of 41 state AGs wrote in a letter to the company earlier this year.
Facebook and Instagram users have long sought creative and sometimes extreme measures to get hacked accounts back due to Meta’s lack of customer support features. Some users have resorted to hiring their own hackers or buying an Oculus headset since Meta has dedicated support staff for the device (users on Reddit report this “method” no longer works). The small claims approach has become a popular topic on Reddit forums where frustrated Meta users trade advice on various “methods” for getting an account back. People Clerk, a site that helps people write demand letters and other paperwork required for small claims court, published a help article called “How to Sue facebook,” in March.
It’s difficult to estimate just how many small claims cases are being brought by Facebook and Instagram users, but they may be on the rise. Patrick Forrest, the chief legal officer for Justice Direct, the legal services startup that owns People Clerk, says the company has seen a “significant increase” in cases against Meta over the last couple years.
One of the advantages of small claims court is that it’s much more accessible to people without deep pockets and legal training. Filing fees are typically under $100 and many courthouses have resources to help people complete the necessary paperwork for a case. “There's no discovery, there are no depositions, there's no pre-trial,” says Bruce Zucker, a law professor at California State University, Northridge. “You get a court date and it's going to be about a five or 10 minute hearing, and you have a judge who's probably also tried to call customer service and gotten nowhere.”
The stakes
“Facebook and Instagram and WhatsApp [have] become crucial marketplaces where people conduct their business, where people are earning a living," Forrest said. “And if you are locked out of that account, business or personal, it can lead to severe financial damages, and it can disrupt your ability to sustain your livelihood.”One such person whose finances were enmeshed with Meta's products is Valerie Garza, the owner of a massage business. She successfully sued the company in a San Diego small claims court in 2022 after a hack which cost her access to personal Facebook and Instagram accounts, as well as those associated with her business. She was able to document thousands of dollars in resulting losses.
A Meta legal representative contacted Garza a few weeks before her small claims court hearing, requesting she drop the case. She declined, and when Meta didn’t show up to her hearing, she won by default. "When we went through all of the loss of revenues," Garza told Engadget, "[the judge] kind of had to give it to me.”
But that wasn’t the end of Garza’s legal dispute with Meta. After the first hearing, the company filed a motion asking the judge to set aside the verdict, citing its own failure to appear at the hearing. Meta also tried to argue that its terms of service set a maximum of $100 liability. Another hearing was scheduled and a lawyer again contacted Garza offering to help get her account back.
“He seemed to actually kind of just want to get things turned back on, and that was still my goal, at this point,” Garza said. It was then she discovered that her business’ Instagram was being used to advertise sex work.
She began collecting screenshots of the activity on the account, which violated Instagram’s terms of service, as well as fraudulent charges for Facebook ads bought by whoever hacked her account. Once again, Meta didn’t show up to the hearing and a judge ordered the company to pay her the $7,268.65 in damages she had requested.
“I thought they were going to show up this time because they sent their exhibits, they didn't ask for a postponement or anything,” she says. “My guess is they didn't want to go on record and have a transcript showing how completely grossly negligent they are in their business and how very little they care about the safety or financial security of their paying advertisers.”
In July of 2023, Garza indicated in court documents that Meta had paid in full. In all, the process took more than a year, three court appearances and countless hours of work. But Garza says it was worth it. “I just can't stand letting somebody take advantage and walking away,” she says.
Even for individuals whose work doesn't depend on Meta's platforms, a hacked account can result in real harm.[/QUOTE]