Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest has ridiculed the idea that by signing up to a Facebook account he signed away his rights.
After years of attacking Facebook’s refusal to remove scam ads featuring his face, Forrest launched civil proceedings against the social media behemoth in California.
He alleges the company’s failure to stop cryptocurrency-related scam ads were “negligent” and a “misappropriation of likeness”. In response, Facebook argued it was protected from liability because Forrest had a Facebook account, and had therefore agreed to the site’s terms and conditions.
Forrest has now hit back at that claim, saying it must have come from a “junior lawyer” and emphasising that he launched the suit to protect victims, not himself.
“That was obviously a junior lawyer who didn’t know jack about what he was talking about,” Forrest told Guardian Australia.
He said when fake pages claiming to be him started proliferating on the site, his cybersecurity team worked with Facebook to clear them out, and to do that had to create an official Andrew Forrest page.
“There were ‘Andrew Forrest’ pages appearing everywhere, particularly Andrew Forrest saying he’s lonely and if you’re out there, and you’re a rich, lonely (woman) … This was ages ago,” he said.
So he “joined” Facebook when an official page was set up to counteract the fake ones, to “stop a crime”.
He said he was taking action in California “not on behalf of myself … which is obviously why a junior lawyer made the comment [that he had signed away his rights]”.
“They’ve obviously said that hundreds of times to thousands of victims,” he said.
“I’m taking it on behalf of victims, for them, so nothing to do with me. I’m not bound by anything from Facebook if I’m taking action on behalf of victims, not on behalf of myself.”
Social media ads falsely using Forrest’s and other high-profile Australians’ faces are being used to sell overpriced goods, or simply to take people’s money without providing anything in return, particularly when selling cryptocurrency.
In one case, a Bunbury woman lost $670,000 to the scam, making payments to Australian and German bank accounts and to a credit card after she saw the fake ads on Facebook and LinkedIn.
Forrest has argued since then that Facebook should be regulated as a publisher and made to take responsibility for the scams.
He has launched separate criminal proceedings in Western Australia, alleging that Facebook has breached federal money laundering laws by failing to stop the ads.
In the case lodged in the United States, he said Facebook was using its algorithms to allow alleged fraudsters to target vulnerable users, so it was “not simply providing neutral tools”.
“Facebook is directly involved with developing and enforcing a system that subjects its users to illegal content,” the court filing states.
Facebook argued that it has limited liability and that its terms of service make it clear that Facebook makes no guarantees it will always be “safe, secure, or error-free”, and that it does not control and is not responsible for third parties.
In its response, filed in court, Facebook has argued that it cannot be held liable on a number of grounds, including that it is protected by section 230 of the US Communications Decency Act, which limits the liability of websites for third-party content posted on those websites.”
Although it will not comment on the cases, Facebook has previously told the Guardian that it takes “a multifaceted approach to stop these ads” and is “committed” to keeping these people off the platform.
Guardian Australia has contacted Facebook, now known as Meta, for comment.
