Inside Facebook

For those not following our advice on how to effectively and authentically market inside Facebook, beware: a US District Court has awarded Facebook a $873 million judgment in its suit against marketers aggressively spamming Facebook users.

Judge Jeremy Fogel made the ruling on Friday in San Jose District Court in Facebook’s case against Adam Guerbuez and Atlantis Blue Capital under the CAN-SPAM Act of 2004. In addition, the ruling prohibits the defendants from “using or accessing, whether directly or indirectly, Facebook’s data, information, computers, computer systems, computer networks, or Facebook user’s accounts, information or profiles for any reason whatsoever.”

While it’s unlikely that Facebook will ever collect the vast majority of this judgment, it does send a loud message to Facebook spammers: Facebook is willing to pursue those abusing its service.

Update: From Facebook:

Does Facebook expect to quickly collect $873 million and share the proceeds in some way with our users? Alas, no. It’s unlikely that Geurbez and Atlantis Blue Capital could ever honor the judgment rendered against them (though we will certainly collect everything we can). But we are confident that this award represents a powerful deterrent to anyone and everyone who would seek to abuse Facebook and its users.

This judgment is the result of the tireless effort of our security experts, legal team and the other significant resources we’ve devoted to finding, exposing and prosecuting the sources of spam attacks. These efforts complement the sophisticated technical systems we continue to develop to limit the impact of these attacks or to block them altogether.