An “extraordinary” approach by social media giant Meta means businessman Denis O’Brien must join more than 700 defendants to his case over allegedly fake online advertisements associating him with promotion of scam financial schemes and products, the High Court has been told.
It is claimed the ads were placed by various accounts through the Meta Ads tool on dates from around August 16th 2023 and Mr O’Brien’s name and image was used without his consent to falsely associate him with the promotion of various scam financial products and schemes advertised on Facebook and Instagram.
As well as suing Dublin-based Meta Platforms Ireland Limited, Meta’s European HQ, he is suing parties whom he claims are behind the adverts. He is claiming damages on grounds including alleged defamation, malicious falsehood, breaches of the Data Protection Act and of his property rights.
In August, he secured orders joining more than 300 co-defendants. On Tuesday, Ms Justice Eileen Roberts granted further orders increasing the number to 748.
Mr O’Brien suspects many defendants he is required to join, as a result of the approach adopted by Meta, are “fictional”, his counsel Paul O’Higgins SC said. The IP addresses and phone numbers could be traced to locations including Angola Vietnam, the US, Canada, Ukraine and Sudan.
Meta had informed him many of 38 internet accounts were compromised by “bad actors” before the ads were published and the original account holder may be innocent parties not involved in that publication.
Meta had not offered to identify the bad actors or present the real legal names of the accounts, it was stated in an affidavit by Harriet Meagher, solicitor for Mr O’Brien. That inability, “or indeed failure”, to identify the natural or legal persons was in “absolute disregard” of its statutory obligations under the EU Digital Services Act.
In response to a court order, Meta provided 89 separate files comprising 12,472 pages of information related to the accounts, she said. No assumption could be made that names associated with the accounts were real legal names and, for that reason, the co-defendants were being joined as ‘John Doe’ or ‘Jane Doe’.
If Mr O’Brien did not join the 748, he was at risk if any of those were later found to have a liability and Meta had failed to provide necessary assurances in that regard, counsel outlined.
Barrister Claire Hogan, for Meta, said it was neither consenting nor objecting to the joining of the additional defendants which was a matter between Mr O’Brien and the proposed defendants.
It was not appropriate for Meta to address the extraneous matters in Ms Meagher’s affidavit but that was not to be seen as any acquiescence by Meta in any of the claims made, she added.
It was for Mr O’Brien to take whatever steps he considered appropriate but, without prejudice to that position, Meta has done all it can to assist him, was not under a duty to separate innocent from guilty users of the ad accounts and did not accept claims it had breached his rights.
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