I'm Edan Krolewicz, founder of ExactBuyer. On Wednesday I filed a lawsuit against Meta Platforms in San Francisco Superior Court.
The case is searchable as "Krolewicz v. Meta Platforms, Inc." on the SF court website (case number currently being assigned by clerk).
On October 1, Meta disabled my personal Facebook (established 2006 — 19 years) and Instagram account. Their lawyers at Perkins Coie claimed my company "scraped" their platforms.
This is false. ExactBuyer has never scraped Meta. All our data comes from licensed third-party data partners who operate under their own contractual relationships.
Within 24 hours of their cease-and-desist letter, I:
- Removed all Facebook and Instagram references from our website
- Disabled all Facebook and Instagram functionality in our platform
- Secured all data containing Facebook/Instagram-related fields
- Provided detailed written explanations of our data sources
- Committed in writing never to offer Facebook or Instagram-related services
Full, immediate compliance with every demand.
Meta's response? Two weeks of complete silence while my accounts faced permanent deletion on November 1st.
My accounts contain:
- 19 years of family photographs, many of which exist nowhere else
- Messages and communications with family members who have since passed away
- Complete photographic documentation of my two children from birth to present
- Personal and professional connections built over nearly two decades
Only when I sent a detailed litigation threat on October 24 did Meta respond in 20 minutes! after two weeks of silence.
They then sent a proposed "Letter Agreement" demanding I:
- Admit that I "improperly collected" Meta data (which is false)
- Accept a $30,000 penalty for any alleged future "breach" determined by Meta's "sole discretion"
- Receive no guarantee of account restoration—only the ability to "request" reinstatement after six months, subject to Meta's "sole discretion"
This "agreement" would have required me to destroy my business, admit to conduct that never occurred, accept unlimited future liability, and receive nothing guaranteed in return.
I refused and reiterated my settlement demand: compensation for damages, immediate account restoration, and mutual release.
Meta's lawyer responded that Meta would not be paying any compensation because I had "suffered no damages." She told me if I wanted to pursue this further, I could "see them in court."
So I filed suit on Wednesday.
I gave Meta until 9:00 AM PT today to settle at $200,000. They didn't respond.
This isn't just about my accounts. It's about whether trillion-dollar companies can hold personal accounts hostage to coerce conduct in business disputes based on false allegations.
As someone with a startup this makes a lot of sense… I don’t need (and can’t afford) full-time roles for everything and part time roles may be a bit more flexible for where we’re at.
Hey this is Edan one of the founders of ExactBuyer.com. Today is our launch day and I'd love to get feedback from the HN community!
ExactBuyer (https://exactbuyer.com) provides real-time APIs and B2B & B2C Audience solutions.
Using just-in-time data updates & extensive data partnerships, we help you to quickly identify and get the best intel on the audiences you care about at a fraction of the price.
We launched on PH and are currently #1 for the day. You can sign up for free on our site and get 100 credits to play with.