Automated robocalls are a regular nuisance in modern American society And thanks to a recent Supreme Court ruling, they may be getting even worse

As reported by Gizmodo, the Supreme Court issued an opinion on Thursday that gives a narrow quota to certain companies' use of automated systems to call users It also ruled that text alerts are not covered by the anti-robocall law This means that Facebook, with its 279 billion users, can call or text virtually anyone with a phone number

"The definition of an autodialer, or automatic telephone dialing system (ATDS), chosen by Congress requires that the device in question must use a random number generator or a sequential number generator This definition excludes devices that do not use such technology, such as Facebook's login notification system," the Supreme Court stated

Based on this opinion, as long as a company does not use a random or sequential number generator (ie, if a database of phone numbers already exists), it is legal for that company to send mass alerts without violating the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA)

Things started back in 2015 when Noah Duguid received an email from Facebook saying that his account had been compromised This was confusing to Duguid because he had never created a Facebook account

Duguid attempted to resolve the issue based on the information in the text message, but to little avail The message asked him to go into his account settings, but there was no account to go into

After numerous unsuccessful attempts to contact Facebook, Duguid hired an attorney They sent a letter to Facebook claiming that the company was violating consumer protection laws Had Facebook admitted the error, the fine would have been as little as $1,500 per text And for a company that generated $86 billion in sales last year, it would have been just one H2O molecule in the social media giant's bucket

But Facebook did not admit error Instead, it took the case all the way to the Supreme Court And the Supreme Court ruled in Facebook's favor

This has already caused alarm among privacy advocates, who say it paves the way for corporations to further embarrass Americans

"Corporations will flood our cell phones with even more annoying robocalls and auto-texts, using automatic dialing devices that are not covered by the Supreme Court's narrow definition," said Margot Sanders of the National Consumer Law Center (NCLC) in a statement Americans already receive 46 billion robocalls a year We urge Congress to act immediately to provide the necessary protections against unsolicited automated calls and texts to ensure that the expected massive increase in robocalls and texts will not render cell phones useless"

Given that Facebook is usually in the middle of some political hot topic at any given time, it is unlikely that the company will use this ruling to begin sending out even more mass alerts in the near future It could, however, do so at a later date

Of course, the Supreme Court's less-than-desirable ruling can always be rectified with new legislation Already, Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Representative Anna Eshoo of California have issued statements calling the ruling disastrous New legislation redefining robocalls could be enacted in this or the next Congress