> It's not free either, it's paid for by the metadata
That's one of the things that could be argued in a court of law... That it was wrong for Facebook to collect data from someone on the false pretense that they would send a message they would not send. I wish the plaintiff who argues it the best of luck... Hell of an uphill battle. The notion data about a person has tangible value that belongs by default to the person and can therefore be exchanged is an open question (legally and morally). And there's still the issue of proof of harm. In fact, that's the biggest issue.
If a person thought they had communicated something via Facebook and Facebook falsely claimed it was sent when it was not, and that person could prove material harm as a result, they might have a civil case to rectify the specific harm. I struggle to imagine such a scenario, but I'll assume it could happen for the sake of argument. "Facebook silently black-holes your attempts to contact a celebrity" as an example, is not harm.
That's one of the things that could be argued in a court of law... That it was wrong for Facebook to collect data from someone on the false pretense that they would send a message they would not send. I wish the plaintiff who argues it the best of luck... Hell of an uphill battle. The notion data about a person has tangible value that belongs by default to the person and can therefore be exchanged is an open question (legally and morally). And there's still the issue of proof of harm. In fact, that's the biggest issue.
If a person thought they had communicated something via Facebook and Facebook falsely claimed it was sent when it was not, and that person could prove material harm as a result, they might have a civil case to rectify the specific harm. I struggle to imagine such a scenario, but I'll assume it could happen for the sake of argument. "Facebook silently black-holes your attempts to contact a celebrity" as an example, is not harm.