D’Ambrosio v. Meta Platforms — Seventh Circuit Holds Social Media Ad Revenue Does Not Create ‘Commercial Purpose’ Under Illinois Right of Publicity Act

Background

Nikko D’Ambrosio sued Meta Platforms, the operators of the Facebook group “Are We Dating the Same Guy? | Chicago” (a group with approximately 100,000 members), a woman he briefly dated (Abbigail Rajala), her parents, and over two dozen unidentified users. D’Ambrosio alleged that after Ms. Rajala posted about her unpleasant experience dating him — including a screenshot of a vulgar text message he sent her — other users shared his photographs and discussed his behavior. He brought claims under the Illinois Right of Publicity Act (IRPA), the Illinois Civil Liability for Doxing Act, and common-law defamation, false light, negligence, and products liability theories.

The district court (Judge Harjani, N.D. Illinois) granted all defendants’ motions to dismiss and found further amendment would be futile. D’Ambrosio appealed.

The Court’s Holding

Right of Publicity (IRPA): The court held that Meta did not use D’Ambrosio’s identity for a “commercial purpose” under the IRPA merely because it displayed advertisements on the same page as user-generated posts containing his photographs. Drawing on Trannel v. Prairie Ridge Media and Huston v. Hearst Communications, the court reasoned that “a free-floating profit motive is not enough” — just as a newspaper does not act with commercial purpose by printing a story alongside advertisements, a social media platform does not trigger right of publicity liability simply because its revenue comes from ads displayed near user content. The court emphasized that “Meta did not have a commercial purpose in terms of the IRPA merely because it displayed advertisements for products or services unrelated to the posts on the same page with them.”

Illinois Doxing Act (first appellate interpretation): In what appears to be the first federal appellate construction of Illinois’s Civil Liability for Doxing Act (740 ILCS 195), the court identified six required elements and held that D’Ambrosio’s allegations did not satisfy the statute’s demanding state-of-mind requirement — “knowledge or reckless disregard that the person whose information is published would be reasonably likely to suffer death, bodily injury, or stalking.” The court found no allegations from which one could reasonably infer that posting about someone’s dating behavior in a group designed to help women “identify men to avoid” recklessly disregarded a risk of physical harm or stalking.

Defamation: The court applied Illinois’s innocent construction rule to a comment by an unidentified user who posted a link to a news article about a different man charged with sexual assault. Because the linked article identified a different person (Anthony LaMonica), showed a mugshot that did not resemble D’Ambrosio, and no user equated the two, the comment was reasonably susceptible to an innocent construction. The defamation per quod claim failed for lack of specifically pleaded special damages.

Section 230: Although both Meta and the group administrators raised Section 230 as an affirmative defense, the court did not reach it because all claims failed on their merits.

Key Takeaways

• Ad revenue alone does not create right of publicity liability. Social media platforms that display unrelated advertisements near user-generated content do not thereby “use” a person’s identity for a “commercial purpose” under the Illinois Right of Publicity Act. This establishes a clear rule for the ad-supported internet.
• First appellate roadmap for the Illinois Doxing Act. The court’s six-element framework and its distinction between reckless encouragement of sensational posts and knowledge of a risk of physical harm gives practitioners the first appellate guidance on this 2024 statute.
• AI-generated citations draw sanctions. The court ordered plaintiff’s counsel to show cause regarding sanctions after identifying fictitious quotations, citations to nonexistent legislative findings, and misstatements of law bearing “the hallmarks of the misuse of generative artificial intelligence.” The court referred counsel to the Illinois ARDC and ordered potential fines and double costs.
• Dating-group speech is protected. Sharing personal experiences and opinions about someone’s dating behavior in an online forum does not constitute defamation where the statements are opinions, and sharing truthful (if embarrassing) facts does not give rise to doxing liability absent a threat of physical harm.

Why It Matters

This decision provides important clarity for social media platforms, online communities, and users. The IRPA holding confirms that the mere proximity of advertising to user-generated content does not convert a platform into an exploiter of users’ likenesses — a rule with significant implications for any ad-supported platform hosting user content. Had the court ruled otherwise, every social media company could face right of publicity claims whenever a user posts someone else’s photograph.

The Doxing Act analysis establishes that operating or participating in a group where people share potentially embarrassing information does not, without more, create liability under Illinois’s new doxing statute. And the sanctions discussion adds to the growing body of appellate law holding attorneys responsible for AI-generated hallucinations in their filings, regardless of how the errors were produced.