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Comment by kritiko | Hacker News Reader

Using Facebook Business Tools requires you to accept an arbitration clause, which may limit your ability to pursue small claims against them:

https://www.facebook.com/legal/commercial_terms/update

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If they were using his business contacts, this seems like it would apply, as that data is collected from the business accounts which would fall under this agreement.

But does this apply when using personal account data? Does the business account agreement override the use of PII on a personal account to initiate business solicitations?

Definitely something to talk to a lawyer about.

Or just try small claims and see.

Sure, but you can pursue the claim in arbitration, and they'll pay the fees as long as you don't claim too much.

> Each party will be responsible for paying any AAA filing, administrative and arbitrator fees in accordance with AAA Rules, except that we will pay for your filing, administrative, and arbitrator fees if your Commercial Claim for damages does not exceed $75,000 and is non-frivolous (as measured by the standards set forth in Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11(b))

This definitely makes the situation quite a bit more sticky, however hope is not completely lost IMHO. For example, there have been several cases recently dealing with binding arbitration clauses and the TCPA, and in several of them, the binding arbitration clause was found to be unenforceable [1].

If it were me, I'd still send the demand letter and see how it plays out.

[1] https://www.dnc.com/news/compelled-arbitration-tcpa-defense-...

If they show up to small claims court they are free to make that argument to change venue. Something tells me they won't show up though.

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