Facebook in the dock over revenge pornography as 14 year old girl sues
Facebook could be faced with a flood of civil claims dependent on the outcome of a landmark trial in which a 14 year-old girl will seek to win damages from the social media giant after it hosted a naked image of her posted on a so-called ‘shame page’.
The revenge porn case is being watched closely by lawyers who believe it could ‘open the floodgates’ to similar claims from other victims and radically change the way social media firms handle explicit images.
Paul Tweed, media lawyer and senior partner at the law firm Johnsons, told the guardian: “A case like this risks opening the floodgates for other civil cases to be taken against Facebook and other social media sites. We’ve already seen an increase in the number of people calling to find out more. I can see it being a very real problem for all the social media sites going forward.”
Facebook has repeatedly striven to have the case thrown out but it will now be decided in the new year after the girls lawyers successfully argued that whilst the image had been removed when reported it had not been permanently blocked.