The class action suit, meanwhile, alleges that rather than accepting internal proposals to fix the accuracy problems of “potential reach”, Facebook instead “developed talking points to deflect from the truth”.
The tech giant did announce some changes to the ad tool in March 2019 — when it said an advertiser’s campaign’s estimated potential reach “is now based on how many people have been shown an ad on a Facebook Product in the past 30 days who match your desired audience and placement criteria” (versus the estimates being previously based on “people who were active users in the past 30 days”).
But the litigants argue that the changes to the tool which displays an estimate to advertisers as they are beginning to create a campaign — and therefore when they’re deciding/considering whether/how much money to spend with Facebook — do not fully fix the issue of the metric not corresponding to the potential audience of people who could see the ad on Facebook.
