Revenge Porn Victim Suing Facebook for $123 Million
A Texas woman is suing Facebook for $123 million alleging that she notified the popular social network when she became a victim of revenge porn, but it failed to act until months later.
Meryam Ali of Houston says her former friend, Adeel Shah Khan, created a fake Facebook profile using her identity and uploaded photos of her face attached to "false, phony, naked body shots" and at least one pic purporting her to be engaged in a sex act, The Wrap reports.
After being notified by family and friends about the page, Ali says she asked Facebook to delete it. However, Ali says that the website took months to deactivate the page filled with revenge porn, a digital novelty in which bitter ex-lovers or friends post intimate or sexual pictures of someone they know.
The bogus page was only removed after the Houston Police Department subpoenaed Facebook in an effort to identify the creator of the fake account.
"It's a pretty serious situation," Ali's attorney, David Altenbern, told Texas Lawyer magazine. "She is obviously very mad about what happened, very upset."
The plaintiff filed a $123 million lawsuit, which equates to 10 cents in damages for each of the 1.23 billion users on the social network.
The suit states that Ali is seeking "full justice for the significant trauma, extreme humiliation, extreme embarrassment, severe emotional disturbances, and severe mental and physical suffering ... due to the unconscionable activities and gross failures of Defendant Adeel and Defendant Facebook."
It also claims that Ali "seeks to expose the frailties and failures of the falsely advertised, and false promoted privacy mechanisms" of Facebook, and the significant damages that can result from those failings, that she further alleges "Facebook's upper management, officers, directors and key employees have long known about and essentially concealed."
Furthermore, the suit states that "this lawsuit is intended ... to get Defendant Facebook, it's officers, directors, management, employees and subscribers (with media attention) to stand up, take notice and pay attention to the serious privacy violations concerns involved in revenge porn situations."
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