Australian Competition and Consumer Commission v Meta Platforms, Inc. (formerly Facebook, Inc.) (No 4)

Australian Competition and Consumer Commission v Meta Platforms, Inc. (formerly Facebook, Inc.) (No 4) [2025] FCA 1084 is a Federal Court pleading decision in the ACCC’s case about alleged scam cryptocurrency advertisements on Facebook.

The Court did not decide whether Meta actually engaged in misleading or deceptive conduct, made misleading representations, or was accessorily liable for scam advertisers’ conduct. The issue was narrower. Meta wanted the ACCC’s revised pleading struck out before trial. Justice Abraham refused that application, allowed the ACCC to file its further amended statement of claim and amended originating application, and ordered Meta to pay costs.

The proceeding concerns alleged scam cryptocurrency advertisements published on Facebook. The judgment says the alleged scam involved a subset of advertisements described as Celeb-Bait ads featuring public figures well known in Australia. When users clicked those ads, they were allegedly taken to landing pages portraying those public figures as using, adopting or endorsing a cryptocurrency trading product, and users were encouraged to sign up.

The ACCC framed the case as one about a modern digital advertising environment rather than traditional media advertising. The judgment records the ACCC’s description of Meta’s business model as one where billions of different advertisements are published every day to targeted users, advertisers are given tools to construct and target ads, and each user’s news feed is curated by Meta’s algorithms.

That framing matters because the ACCC’s case is not limited to saying a particular ad was misleading. It also seeks to connect the alleged scam ads with Meta’s systems, ad review processes, targeting tools, knowledge of recurring scam patterns, and alleged failure to implement safeguards or warnings.

This was already the second strike-out dispute in the case. In August 2024, Yates J struck out an earlier statement of claim. The ACCC then repleaded. Meta argued that the revised pleading still had major defects. It said the allegations about safeguards were not properly linked to the identified ads, that the accessorial liability case was legally unsound, and that some allegations were too vague.

The Court rejected those objections at this stage. A central theme in the reasons is that a strike-out application is about the sufficiency of the pleading, not whether the applicant will ultimately win at trial. The Court also stressed that summary procedures should not be used to shut down the development of the law too early, especially where existing legal principles are being applied to modern business models.

The legal question was whether the ACCC’s further amended statement of claim should be struck out under rule 16.21 of the Federal Court Rules 2011 (Cth). The Court had to decide whether the pleading failed to disclose a reasonable cause of action or was vague and embarrassing.

Importantly, that is not the same as deciding whether the ACCC’s allegations are true. The Court was assessing whether the pleading gave Meta fair notice of the case it had to meet and whether the pleaded causes of action had some chance of success on the allegations made.

The Court also had to consider Meta’s broader submission style. Justice Abraham said Meta’s arguments tended to analyse individual paragraphs in isolation rather than reading the pleading as a whole. The reasons repeatedly say the document had to be considered holistically, not in a piecemeal way.

The Court further noted that some objections now raised had not been taken against the earlier statement of claim, even though the same concepts had appeared there. That did not decide the application by itself, but it informed the Court’s view about whether the alleged defects were really as serious or confusing as Meta claimed.

Justice Abraham dismissed Meta’s application. The ACCC was granted leave to file its further amended statement of claim and amended originating application, and Meta was ordered to pay the applicants’ costs.

On the safeguards issue, the Court did not accept Meta’s argument that the pleading lacked a factual link to the identified advertisements. The Court said the concept of reasonable safeguards had already been part of the earlier pleading, and that the revised pleading reflected the understanding required by Yates J’s earlier ruling. The Court also said the word reasonable did not create any real problem. It had an ordinary meaning, was defined earlier in the pleading, and the pleading identified what the safeguards were, why they mattered and how they could have been implemented.

The Court held that the connection between the safeguards and the Annexure A ads was pleaded. It accepted the ACCC’s reasoning that, in the context of Meta’s system or business model, if any one of the pleaded safeguards had been adopted, that would have prevented or reduced Celeb-Bait advertisements and advertisements with the attributes of the Annexure A ads, and therefore would have reduced the likelihood that a particular Annexure A ad was published.

The Court also rejected Meta’s argument that the ACCC had failed to confine its case to the identified ads. Justice Abraham said the ACCC had confined the contraventions to the 245 advertisements in Annexure A, and that it was still open to the ACCC to prove those matters in the context of Meta’s pleaded business model.

On accessorial liability, the Court accepted that the ACCC’s approach involved some novelty. The ACCC did not allege that a particular human at Meta knew the precise content of each Annexure A ad at the time of publication. Instead, it alleged that relevant knowledge should be attributed to Meta through the content of its records and systems, together with its alleged knowledge of an ongoing problem with Celeb-Bait ads and its ad review processes.

The Court refused to strike out that case. Justice Abraham said it was not appropriate on a strike-out application to resolve whether the authorities ultimately supported the ACCC’s approach. Whether Meta knew the essential elements of the alleged contraventions was treated as a question of fact, or at least a mixed question of law and fact, better determined at the substantive hearing.

The Court also rejected Meta’s complaint that certain paragraphs were vague and embarrassing. It held that the pleading identified the subject matter of the complaints, the relevant time period, and who made the complaints, with detailed particulars in an annexure. Overall, the Court considered that Meta knew the case it had to meet.

A key point running through the judgment is that the Court drew a clear line between a pleading that is genuinely unclear and a pleading that raises difficult, contested or novel legal theories. The latter is not enough, by itself, to justify striking out the case before trial.

Businesses should read this decision carefully, but with the right lens. It is not a final ruling that online platforms are liable for scam ads. It is a ruling that the ACCC has pleaded an arguable case that can proceed. That distinction matters.

Even so, the judgment is commercially important because it shows the kind of case a regulator may try to run in a digital advertising setting. The focus may be on systems and conduct, not just on the wording of a single ad. The ACCC’s pleaded theory, as described in the judgment, looks at the interaction between ad tools, targeting, algorithms, review processes, known scam patterns, and available safeguards.

If your business publishes ads, hosts third-party promotions, runs a marketplace, or manages campaigns for clients, this is a reminder to examine the machinery around your advertising operations. Ask how ads enter the system, what categories are treated as high risk, what warning signs trigger escalation, and what records exist when complaints are received. If the same scam pattern appears repeatedly and your controls do not change, that can become part of the factual picture in a later dispute.

The judgment is especially relevant where ads involve financial products, investment opportunities, crypto, endorsements, testimonials or public figures. The alleged scam in this case involved public figures being portrayed as endorsing a cryptocurrency trading product. Those are exactly the kinds of claims that can spread quickly and cause consumer harm at scale.

The accessorial liability discussion is also worth watching. The Court did not decide that the ACCC’s theory will succeed. But it was willing to let the theory be tested at trial, even though it was novel and involved attribution of knowledge through systems and records rather than through a specific employee’s direct knowledge of each ad. Businesses that rely heavily on automation should not assume that the absence of manual review automatically protects them.

For many businesses, the practical response is governance. Make sure your ad compliance settings match the way your business actually operates. A policy that assumes manual review may not help much if your real model is automated, fast-moving and high-volume. Controls need to be realistic, documented and capable of being updated when recurring risks appear.

The judgment was delivered by Abraham J in the Federal Court of Australia on 5 September 2025. It followed a hearing on 4 June 2025. The orders dismissed Meta’s strike-out application, granted the applicants leave to file the further amended statement of claim and amended originating application, and ordered Meta to pay costs.

The reasons also refer to the earlier 2024 decision by Yates J, which had struck out the previous statement of claim. This means the 2025 judgment should be understood as part of an ongoing pleading history rather than the end of the case.

For readers following the proceeding, the most important status point is this: the merits remain to be determined. The Court has not yet decided whether Meta engaged in misleading or deceptive conduct, whether any alleged representations were made as pleaded, or whether Meta is accessorily liable for scam advertisers’ conduct. Those issues are for the substantive hearing.

That makes this case useful in a specific way. It shows how the Court approaches pleading sufficiency in a novel digital platform case, and it gives businesses a practical sense of the kinds of allegations that may survive an early procedural challenge.