Meta sues spy company Voyager Labs for allegedly using phoney Facebook accounts to gather user data

In order to gather user data and provide monitoring services to its clients, Meta has filed a lawsuit against a company it claims created tens of thousands of bogus Facebook profiles. Voyager Labs positions itself as the world's foremost provider of sophisticated AI-based investigative solutions, according to the reports. In practise, this requires sorting through a tonne of social media data huge make judgements about particular people. The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) accepted Voyager Labs' services in 2021, according to The Guardian, on the condition that it could predict criminal activity in the near future. The case was announced in a blog post written by Meta on January 12 that day, according to which Voyager Labs had violated the company's terms of service. [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="1200"] Image credit- The Guardian[/caption] Voyager Labs allegedly used its surveillance software illegally to gather data from Facebook and Instagram using over 38,000 fictitious user identities, according to a lawsuit complaint from Meta dated November 11, 2022. Additionally, Voyager Labs obtained data from social media and messaging platforms like Twitter, YouTube, and Telegram. According to Meta, Voyager Labs used false identities between July 2022 and September 2022 to steal information from more than 600,000 Facebook users. More than 60,000 Voyager Labs-related profiles were allegedly cancelled on or around January 12 on social networking sites like Facebook and Instagram, according to Meta. Meta is requesting that Facebook, Instagram, and other services not be used by Voyager Labs in order to force the company to stop violating its terms of service. Additionally, Meta demands that Voyager Labs return its "ill-gotten earnings in a sum to be proven at trial," as it alleges that the corporation benefited financially from the business without being fairly compensated. [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Image credit- Tech Times[/caption] Numerous companies, most notably Palantir and its competitor Voyager Labs, make grandiose declarations about their capacity to predict criminal behaviour based on an individual's prior deeds and digital footprint. According to experts, the algorithms used in these technologies are too simple to accurately predict criminal conduct. One of the LAPD's data-driven projects was the subject of an internal review in 2019 that revealed the technology to be faulty and racial discrimination. "Companies like Voyager are part of an industry that sells scraping services to anyone regardless of the users they target and for what purpose," says Jessica Romero, head of platform enforcement and litigation at Meta, "even as a tool to profile people for criminal behaviour." She continued by saying that such a corporation covertly collects information that people share with their neighbourhood, family, and friends without any oversight or accountability and in a way that might violate people's civil rights.