Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear Facebook’s defense after an appeals court determined it violated anti-robocalling rules. The court will examine whether Facebook’s automated alert texts count as an “automatic telephone dialing system,” establishing a clearer definition of illegal phone spam.
Facebook was sued in 2015 by non-Facebook user Noah Duguid, who complained that he’d been receiving unwanted text messages from the site. The alerts told Duguid that someone was trying to access his nonexistent Facebook account, and he couldn’t get Facebook to stop sending them. Duguid argued that Facebook had violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, which is supposed to protect Americans from unwanted auto-dialed calls.