Court orders Facebook to pay Rs 41 lakh to man for locking him out of his account

A man in Georgia, USA sued Facebook and won $50,000 (over Rs 41 lakh) after the social media giant locked him out of his account without giving a proper reason, according to a Fox News report.

Jason Crawford, a resident of Columbus, sued the company for terminating his account without a valid reason and refusing to address the situation.

“I woke up one Sunday morning. I tapped on my Facebook icon, and I was locked out. They made it clear I was banned. It just gave me the briefest snapshot of saying that I had violated their standards on child sexual exploitation. And then it went away,” he told the news outlet.

He claimed that no such violation ever occurred. Nor did Facebook ever mention which of his actions or posts would have violated such a rule.

In order to resolve the issue, he reached out to Facebook’s parent company, Meta Platforms several times, but all his messages were unanswered. His attempts to appeal the decision and communicate with a person within Facebook’s support system proved futile as the process could only be accessed through an active account.

He had previously received a violation due to political comments, but this time, he found himself completely restricted from accessing his Facebook profile in which he had stored pictures, videos, posts that he liked to look at from time to time.

“I just think it’s bad business practice. It’s a crappy way to treat people. At least tell me what I did wrong,”. Crawford told FOX 5 Atlanta.

Crawford, who is a lawyer himself, decided to sue Facebook, alleging negligence on the part of the company in his August 2022 complaint. Despite the lawsuit, he experienced continued silence from Facebook.

However, when Facebook’s legal team failed to respond to the lawsuit, a judge ordered Meta to pay him $50,000.

That’s when he heard from the company, following which his account was restored. However, Crawford said Facebook is apparently not cooperating with the judge and has not paid out any money to him in accordance with the court judgment.

Facebook has not commented on the matter as yet.