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Facebook-Deprived Man Sues For $500K
broggyr writes "According to a story from MSNBC: 'For Mustafa Fteja, Facebook is more than just a hobby. It's the main way the 30-year-old Albanian native has stayed in touch with friends and family all over the world for three years, and when he was inexplicably cut off from it, he did what every other person in this country seems to do when they're mad enough: he sued. In seeking $500,000, Fteja is suing Facebook for disabling his account, in which he had about 340 friends and family and had spent "timeless hours creating content and relationships [Facebook] benefited from," the suit contends. He wants it back on, and he wants the company to pay for the damage of alienating him from his family and friends (about $1500 per friend/family).' Must be nice when you can use a free site and expect to get paid when they cut you off."
Considering you are required to give up your rights to any information posted on Facebook, does that not indicate you are in fact paying a fee for using it? It might not be a monetary fee, but a fee none the less.
"Free as in Beer" is becoming expensive these days! If we're going to agree we're now discussing Facebook as the metagame to adapt around, then we can't just give them a free pass to boot the user but keep all his nice crispy data they gathered for their ads.
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Even if you don't pay your gas bill at all in many states they can't cut you off in winter. Many water utilities can't cut off your water ever.
Now, having not actually RTFA yet, I can't comment on the merits of the case.
However, the sum he's suing for is relatively small, compared to most of the crazy lawsuits I've seen - usually, they seek at least $10M, sometimes much, much more, all the way into the trillions. That itself says something about the case - it may be more about actual justice than profiteering.
PS: The guy is claiming a friendship is worth $1,500. Minimum statutory damages for "pirating" a single album is $7,500, or five friends. That alone says much about the US judicial system and this case.
Same situation here. I've been cursed with a native Estonian forename "Anti" ( http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Anti ; it is not a rare name here, i know multiple Antis and even some celebrities are named Anti). Facebook is very strict about using real names and they are having automatic to ensure that... And my forename fails the check. A year ago, it took me about a month of e-mailing to register an account. I even had to scan and send my passport copy to prove I'm real.
Fast forward one year... Today morning, I'm unable to log in. Facebook tells my account has been suspended and I have to enter my real name to proceed. I enter my real name again and get an e-mail that my account is deleted now and they do not accept any further correspondence regarding that matter. Let's see if they answer to my e-mails or I'm banned from facebook forever just because my forename.
Mustafa Fteja??? The letters 'F' and 'T' should never appear next to each other without a vowel separating them, unless it is at the end of a word such as 'draft' or 'theft'.
After reading your comment I must say that's a rather lofty claim. I could probably debunk it further if I spent more than fifteen seconds on it.
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
Lots of comments about how suing is evil and hope this guy loses blah blah blah. Anyone ask why this guy got booted? The guy basically has not been told why he was booted. Despite repeated emails all he was told was "you violated our terms of service" which is a nice generic cop out for "out automated processes found something and we don't feel like treating you like a human being to give you any more specifics." It seems like suing to find out why is his only option since Facebook isn't cooperating.
Sure it's a free service, sure it's quite possible that it's not a big deal since it's only a social networking site and little of value will truly be lost. However, Facebook offered it's service for free, the guy used it, and then got booted without discussion. The guy deserves at least some answers, any human being would. And it looks like the only way to get answers is to make it relevant to Facebook that they should be providing them or risk this and other lawsuits. It sounds less frivolous and more like the guy just wants some respect and I think he deserves it. Otherwise we risk other people being treated like this. I urge this man to go go go.
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While $500,000 is ridiculous for compensation from a free service, I do feel he has one valid point: if Facebook has disabled his account for any reason, they should provide it to him and give him some avenue to correct the situation. Even though it's a free service, with over 500 million active users, it's a pretty ubiquitous and universal service. It might not be wise to come to depend on it, but it's certainly understandable how someone would. If Google seemingly arbitrarily disabled your Gmail account (insert free but depended on email service here) would you be as dismissive?