When the social media giant Meta deleted Emmett Soldati’s Instagram account for his small cafe Teatotaller — a hotspot for the LGBTQ community then in Somersworth, New Hampshire and now with locations in Dover and Concord — Soldati wound up taking them to court.
That was six years ago. Now, the court has finally found in favor of Soldati.
Reports Seacoast Online:
From the beginning [in 2011], Soldati’s business used Instagram heavily as a way to engage and find customers.
By 2018, Teatotaller had a large following to whom it promoted shows, specials, and other items. Soldati paid Instagram and Facebook for use of the professional platform.
When he first found himself unable to log in to his account in June 2018, he thought there was some kind of technical glitch.
“Over the course of 24 hours realizing it was deleted, I was very concerned,” Soldati said. All users could see when they tried to look at the account was a blank screen. “And so, you know, anyone might assume we don’t exist anymore or we closed or whatnot and all of the shows and events and specials that we were just sort of planning to engage with our audience, we didn’t have that line of communication.”
Having no luck with Instagram’s help support, he decided to file a small claim in the Dover District Court, thinking Facebook would “get the memo” and either give the account back or pay him a couple hundred bucks to repay him for lost revenue.
“What was interesting is after I filed that claim, Facebook’s response to it was so enormous and sort of so disproportionate to what I was, at the time, ultimately claiming: in their eyes, a relatively small account, small business owner just seeking a quick fix,” Soldati said. “And they sort of threw the book at me and had this massive memo and motion to dismiss that had like 10 points of why Facebook doesn’t owe me anything. That was the moment that I realized that I had sort of struck some kind of nerve.”
Despite Facebook hiring several law firms to defend their case, Soldati, representing himself, was able to successfully argue Meta/Facebook committed a breach of contract and that they were not immune under the Communications Decency Act.
Soldati argued that by deleting his account with no explanation or warning, Meta had broken its contract set in the terms of service, and therefore was a breach of contract. In response, Meta claimed Soldati had accidentally deleted the account himself. But Soldati had screenshots from the day his account was deleted.
“The defendant provided two conflicting reasons for the deletion and was unable to specify a clear reason for the deletion,” read the court’s final order. “This court finds that the plaintiff has met their burden showing that they did not delete their own account.”
The court ruled in favor of Soldati that Facebook had committed a breach of contract.
Read the complete Seacoast Online story here.
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