Facebook tries to stop once and for all the use of automated means, popularly known as bots, being prohibited by the terms and conditions of use of the company, finally going to court. In this sense, the company has issued a statement noting that today Thursday it has filed separate lawsuits in Europe and the United States.
In the case of Europe, the lawsuit has been filed by Facebook Inc. and Facebook Ireland in Madrid courts against MGP25 Cyberint Services, a Madrid company, which has used an automated system to give fake likes and comments on Instagram profiles for commercial purposes in order to artificially improve their visibility through these fraudulent interactions.
According to a Facebook statement:
Defendant’s service was designed to bypass Instagram’s restrictions against fake engagement by mimicking the official Instagram app as it connects to our systems. The defendants did this for profit, and continued to do so even after we sent a cease and desist letter and deactivated their accounts.
Besides, also accuses them of breaking the Spanish Data Protection Law. At the moment there is not much information about the Madrid company denounced, only that it belongs to the sector of sale of computers, computer peripherals and applications.
In the case of the United States, the lawsuit has been brought against Mohammad Zaghar in a federal court in San Francisco for operating a data scraping service called Massroot8, which was asking people for their Facebook login credentials through from your website and then use them through a computer program to control a botnet.
Likewise, as in the previous case, he also received a letter of cease and desist letter and his accounts were disabled, in addition to being accused of breaking the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act in the United States.
The company also points out that it is about this action is one of the first times a social media company has used coordinated, multi-jurisdiction litigation to enforce its Terms and protect its users.
