Twitter Sued Over 'Famous' App

Twitter has been hit with a potential class-action lawsuit over an app that lets people "invest" in other users' profiles. 

The complaint, filed by Jason Parker in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, accuses Twitter and the app developer, Hey, of violating a 2015 Alabama law giving people the right to control the commercial use of their identities.

Parker's allegations center on the app "Famous: The Celebrity Twitter," which he says is a new version of the controversial app called "Stolen."

Stolen let people use virtual currency to "buy" and "sell" Twitter users' profiles. That app was removed from the Apple store in January, after a lawmaker argued it enabled bullying and harassment.

The following month, the same developer released "Famous: The Celebrity Twitter."

Parker alleges that the new app is substantially the same as Stolen, except for some minor differences -- including that it allows people to "invest" in profiles, as opposed to "buying" them.

"The app still displays real life Twitter users, including their full names and photographs, without their consent and players still collect these real life people from the app’s marketplace using virtual currency," the petition alleges. "The app continues to misappropriate the full names and pictures of tens of thousands of real people without their consent just as it did before."

Parker, who is seeking class-action status, is seeking to hold Twitter responsible on the theory that it makes information about its users available to Hey through the application programming interface.

"Hey relies exclusively on Twitter to supply it with names and photographs to fill the App’s inventory of real people," the complaint alleges. "Had Twitter revoked Hey’s access to its API, the only people that would have been available for players to collect would be those that voluntarily downloaded and joined the app themselves."

It's not clear that Parker will be able to proceed against the microblogging service, given that a provision of the federal Communications Decency Act -- Section 230 -- generally protects Web platforms for activity by users, although there are exceptions.

If that law applies to Parker's allegations, Twitter has a strong argument that the lawsuit should be dismissed, Santa Clara University professor Eric Goldman tells MediaPost. "If Section 230 applies, this is an easy case for Twitter," he says.

Twitter declined to comment.

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