LOS ANGELES—Sexologist and media personality Dr. Susan Block has a court date set for June 20 in her ongoing battle with social media company Meta Platforms and its chief executive officer, Mark Zuckerberg.
The scheduled hearing before a San Mateo judge in Block vs. Meta Platforms, Inc. seeks to vacate an arbitration ruling that Block deemed "wrongful" after she challenged Meta for its deactivation of her 15-year-old accounts on its Facebook and Instagram platforms. Block first filed her motion to vacate the arbitration ruling late last October, and Meta subsequently attempted to strike the motion.
Block’s response to Meta’s complaint about her motion is the latest maneuver in her fight to restore her accounts. She contends that Meta's content moderation algorithms censored and deactivated her Facebook profile and Instagram account unfairly, arbitrarily and without warning.
Though Block herself called her motion a "longshot" in an announcement of this latest development, she maintains that not only was the arbitrator biased in the case, prejudiced about basic sex education, ignorant of algorithmic error rates, and disingenuous about Facebook’s vast and unique social media power, but there was no legal authority to litigate a breach of contract for Facebook and Instagram.
"We the People—the users who give these platforms life—deserve transparency, fairness, and respect," Block states. "Meta's algorithmic overreach and its suppression of free speech, alternative voices, artistic expression, responsible sex education, consenting adult relationships and essential modern communications, must be challenged."
Block contends that Meta's deactivation of her accounts—which she’d used since 2008 to communicate with friends, fans, family and fellow alumni about her life with her husband of 32 years, Pr. Maximillian R. Lobkowicz di Filangieri, and their community of Bonoboville, art, travels, politics and more—has cost her upwards of $75,000 in damages.
