Woman Sues Facebook in Revenge Porn Case

Says company wouldn't remove bogus photos, seeks $123M
By Elizabeth Armstrong Moore,  Newser Staff
Posted Aug 1, 2014 6:01 AM CDT
Woman Sues Facebook in Revenge Porn Case
In this Oct. 30, 2013 photo, Annmarie Chiarini, left, a victim of revenge porn, attends a news conference about a proposal to make it illegal in Maryland.   (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

Posting suggestive images of your ex online without permission is a big no-no, and the latest revenge porn lawsuit is going after not just the guy who allegedly did so but Facebook, too. Houston woman Meryem Ali alleges that a friend she met five years ago but doesn't know well created a Facebook page using her name and put images of her face onto bodies in suggestive and even pornographic poses. Her lawsuit says this caused her "significant trauma, extreme humiliation, extreme embarrassment, severe emotional disturbances, and severe mental and physical suffering," reports Texas Lawyer.

Ali is suing not just former friend Adeel Shah Khan but Facebook as well, for 10 cents per 1.23 billion subscribers, or $123 million total. Ali claims that she spent months trying to get Facebook to remove the fake profile, and that it wasn't taken down until the Houston Police Department subpoenaed Facebook's records to try to find who created the page, reports the Houston Chronicle. Ali adds that she hopes to "expose the frailties and failures of the falsely advertised and falsely promoted privacy mechanisms of defendant Facebook." Ars Technica, however, doesn't think she has much of a chance of collecting from the social network. (There's no law against it yet in Texas, but posting nude revenge pics is now a felony in Arizona.)

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