Totally random

Thanks Facebook! And Supreme Court! And legislators who did not predict the Internet! Also, 7 other things worth your time.

Get ready for more robocalls! We’ll have Facebook to thank, and also the U.S. Supreme Court.

Depsite the fact that I’m a lawyer (non-practicing, but still), it’s surprising the degree to which far-reaching court decisions sometimes come out, and I find I’ve never heard a word about the case before.

That’s what happened Friday, when the Supremes voted unanimously in a case called Facebook vs. Duguid.

Noah Duguid has never had a Facebook account, but he kept getting unsolicited text messages from Facebook telling him that someone had tried to log in to his (nonexistent) account.

So, Duguid sued Facebook under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991, which bans most unsolicited robocalls, and provides for up to $1,500 per violation. He also sought to certify his case as a class action.

Facebook’s defense, if I can summarize, was twofold.

• First, it said that the whole thing was an excusable error, not spam, in that somebody else who had Duguid’s phone number before him had opted-in with …