• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, March 30, 2018

Facebook is asking an appellate court to uphold a recent settlement of a privacy lawsuit over allegations that it scanned users' private messages.

The settlement, which requires Facebook to add a 22-word sentence to its help site, "provides meaningful benefits," the company argues in papers filed this week with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The agreement, originally approved by U.S. District Court Judge Phyllis Hamilton in the Northern District of California, resolved a privacy lawsuit brought against the company in 2013 by Arkansas resident Matthew Campbell and Oregon resident Michael Hurley. They alleged that Facebook violated the federal wiretap law by by intercepting users' messages to each other and scanning them. The company reportedly did so in order to determine whether people were sending their friends links to outside sites.

That suit was only one of numerous privacy cases filed against Facebook in recent years. Among other pending cases, the company currently is battling a suit alleging that it violated an Illinois biometrics law by creating a "faceprint" database, as well as lawsuits stemming from recent revelations that Cambridge Analytica harvested data from 50 million users.

The allegations about the message scans emerged in 2012, when security researcher Ashkan Soltani reported that Facebook counts in-message links as "likes." Facebook said at the time that no private information is exposed.

The social networking service has since changed that practice. The settlement notes that Facebook revised its prior practice, but the agreement doesn't prohibit the company from changing it again in the future.

The settlement requires Facebook to pay up to almost $4 million to the class-action attorneys who brought the case, and $5,000 each to the two Facebook users who served as plaintiffs, but no monetary awards to the company's other users. Instead, users who want to pursue claims for monetary damages may bring new lawsuits.

The deal also requires Facebook to add the following sentence to its help site: “We use tools to identify and store links shared in messages, including a count of the number of times links are shared.”

The Center for Class Action Fairness, founded by activist Ted Frank, recently asked 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to vacate the settlement, arguing that it is "worthless" to users.

The group argues that Facebook's users, as opposed to class counsel, are supposed to be the primary beneficiaries of a deal. "The settlement here gives preferential treatment to class counsel, allocating virtually the entire settlement benefit to the lawyers rather than the class," the organization contends.

The influential group Electronic Privacy Information Center is backing that request.

Facebook counters in its new papers that the deal was reasonable because the consumers' claims were "weak."

"Courts routinely approve as fair and reasonable settlements that offer even minimal benefits in exchange for the release of weak claims," the company argues.

The social networking site adds that it had "strong defenses" to the privacy claims. Among others, it was prepared to argue that consumers consented to the alleged interceptions. "The Data Policy explains that Facebook collects 'the contents and other information' that people provide when they use Facebook, including when they 'message or communicate with others,'" Facebook writes.