Their legal defence would be that the word 'related' between the 'like' endorsement and the new 'content' creates a separation such that one wouldn't confuse the two. Hopefully a judge would then make it clear that the practice is intended to deceive, and is in fact illegal. That would be nice.
Any time you have ever 'liked' anything on Facebook is a time that Facebook interprets that you like the entire organization behind the piece. So if you like The Washington Post, a day later, or 8 years later, Facebook will put your name and photo by an article that you've never seen and say that you like The Washington Post with a big news article, picture, author, etc, that you've never seen.
It is certainly intended to make the user's friends think that this content is endorsed by you, to get your clicks and attention and ad dollars. It certainly should be illegal. They've been doing it for years though, so it seems that this kind of thing is the new normal.
Any time you have ever 'liked' anything on Facebook is a time that Facebook interprets that you like the entire organization behind the piece. So if you like The Washington Post, a day later, or 8 years later, Facebook will put your name and photo by an article that you've never seen and say that you like The Washington Post with a big news article, picture, author, etc, that you've never seen.
It is certainly intended to make the user's friends think that this content is endorsed by you, to get your clicks and attention and ad dollars. It certainly should be illegal. They've been doing it for years though, so it seems that this kind of thing is the new normal.