Jerk.com misrepresented the source of its content and benefits of membership, 1st Circuit says
A federal appeals court has upheld a summary decision by the Federal Trade Commission finding the founder of Jerk.com was personally liable for misrepresentations about the source of the website’s content and the benefits of membership.
The Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Monday in an appeal by the founder, John Fanning, Courthouse News Service reports. How Appealing links to the opinion.
The website led consumers to believe website content was user-generated, according to the appeals court. In reality, most of the profiles were populated with content from Facebook.
Jerk.com never expressly said how its profile pages were created, but reasonable consumers could conclude the profiles were created by other Jerk.com users, the appeals court said. The court cited Jerk.com’s reference to millions of users and a post saying it couldn’t be liable for content reflecting its users’ views. The website also maintained a “post a jerk” page inviting users to post profiles of other individuals.
The evidence also showed Jerk.com misrepresented the benefits of membership, according to the appeals court. Jerk.com said its users could look at the profiles and vote on whether someone was or was not a jerk. The website’s “remove me” page advised that individuals could manage their reputation and resolve disputes about their profile pages with a $30 paid subscription.
But “the record is bereft of any evidence that Jerk.com provided even one paid member the opportunity to contest information on a profile page,” the appeals court said.
The appeals court did, however, strike down as overbroad parts of the FTC’s injunctive order requiring Fanning to keep the agency informed of his future business affiliations. At oral arguments, the FTC had conceded that the provision would ostensibly require Fanning to report if he was a waiter at a restaurant, the court noted.
