NLUJ DEAL

MEDIATION
COMPETITION 3.0

March 4 - 6, 2022

Semi-Finals
Proposition
 The Social Dilemma
Jeh Kapoor, 19, along with his college friends – Wanda Maximoff, Chris Evans and Tony Stark
founded “The Friendsbook” (“Friendsbook”) while studying psychology at Wakanda University. A
keen computer programmer, Jeh had already developed a number of social-networking websites for
fellow students, including SyllabusMatch, which allowed users to view people taking their degree. In
the initial stages of development of Friendsbook, Jeh asked his best friend, Wanda, to deposit INR
30,000 in a bank account that would be accessible to both of them. Jeh had promised to Wanda that
this money would go toward the servers needed to host the site for Friendsbook.

Within 24 hours, 1,200 Wakandan students had signed up, and after one month, over half of the
undergraduate population had a profile. The network was promptly extended to other Marvel
universities, the Atlantis and eventually all Multiverse universities. It became Friendsbook.com within
a year of it hitting the Wakanda University after the address was purchased for INR 400,000
(contributed equally by Jeh and Wanda).

Around this time, Chris introduced Jeh and Wanda to Vision, the founder of Metube, who presented
a "billion-dollar" vision for the company. Jeh was impressed, but Wanda dismissed him as paranoid
and delusional. Later, Jeh decided to quit Wakanda University to relocate the company to Asgard –
the technological capital of the Multiverse and to find investors for Friendsbook. Wanda decided to
stay back for business development and finding investors in Marvel.

Vision later moved in to the house that Jeh was using as a base of operations and became more
involved with the company, much to Wanda's annoyance. Meanwhile, Wanda objected to Vision
making business decisions for Friendsbook and froze the company's bank account in the resulting
dispute. She relented when Jeh revealed that they had secured INR 10,00,000 from angel investor
Thor. However, the new investment deal allowed Wanda’s share of Friendsbook to be diluted from
34% to 0.03% while maintaining the ownership percentage of all other parties. This lead to a lawsuit
where Wanda claimed her shares of Friendsbook were unfairly diluted when the company was
incorporated. Jeh decided to settle with Wanda on the condition that Wanda will not claim any
further stake in the company as co-founder post the settlement. Wanda agreed and settled.

Friendsbook has 500 million members in 207 countries, is currently valued at 50 billion rupees, and
Jeh is the youngest billionaire in the world. The site remains free to join, and makes a profit through
advertising revenue. The site's features have continued to enhance - users can now give gifts to friends,
post free classified advertisements and even develop their own applications.
1

This problem is drafted by Ms. Prakrati Shah. This problem is drafted purely for academic purposes and for use as a mock problem in the Deal
Mediation Competition. The narrative adopted by the author of the problem is purely personal and is not attributable to the organization.
Resemblance to any person or organization is purely coincidental.
However, in the recent years, Friendsbook has faced a number of privacy concerns. The Friendsbook
data privacy scandal centers around the collection of personally identifiable information by the
political consulting and strategic communication firm Loki Analytica. That company–and others–
were able to gain access to personal data of Friendsbook users due to the confluence of a variety of
factors, broadly including inadequate safeguards against companies engaging in data harvesting, little
to no oversight of developers by Friendsbook, developer abuse of the Friendsbook API, and users
agreeing to overly broad terms and conditions.

In part these concerns stem from the company's revenue model that involves selling information
about its users, and the loss of privacy this could entail. In addition, employers and other
organizations and individuals have been known to use Friendsbook data for their own purposes. As a
result, peoples' identities have sometimes been revealed without their permission. In response,
pressure groups and governments have increasingly asserted the users' right to privacy and to control
their personal data.

In the meanwhile, Wanda started her own technology development and privacy firm – “The Scarlet
Witch”. The firm specialises in advising on software and hardware related contracts, policy making,
strategising, risk assessment, cloud computing, data privacy, e- commerce, etc. The Scarlet Witch is
now in its 10th year of inception and has already established a niche market for itself in advising
clients on data privacy and technology development issues.

Jeh who is now constantly under pressure from various governmental authorities and the public has
decided that this would be the right time to consult a specialist in the field of technology
development and data privacy to protect the long - term interests of Friendsbook. Since The Scarlet
Witch is currently the market leader in this field, Jeh personally reached out to Wanda with the
suggestion of having neutral parties facilitate the discussions.

This problem is drafted by Ms. Prakrati Shah. This problem is drafted purely for academic purposes and for use as a mock problem in the Deal
Mediation Competition. The narrative adopted by the author of the problem is purely personal and is not attributable to the organization.
Resemblance to any person or organization is purely coincidental.