Cohen

ORDER GRANTING MOTION TO DISMISS

I. INTRODUCTION

In a few short years, Facebook has emerged as a platform on which individuals can disseminate vast amounts of information, ranging from trivial details of daily personal life to breaking developments in international newsmaking events. As a “social networking” internet site, Facebook exists because its users want to share information—often about themselves—and to obtain information about others, within and among groups and subgroups of persons they already know or with whom they become acquainted through using Face-book. During Facebook’s growth, however, it has from time to time introduced new features ostensibly designed to facilitate its users’ abilities to share and obtain information that have provoked objections from some that the system is distributing too much information automatically, without users’ consent or intent, and to the detriment of personal privacy interests. This putative class action arises from Facebook’s implementation of such a feature, known as “Friend Finder.”

Friend Finder is a service that a Face-book user can choose to employ by giving the system access to email accounts the user may have on other…