Corporate Greed Case Study: Cash App & Its Impact on Consumer Privacy
TLDR: A class-action lawsuit alleges that Block, Inc.’s Cash App built a lucrative business model by deliberately turning its users into a spam-marketing army. The company’s “Invite Friends” program allegedly offered cash bonuses to users for sending unsolicited, pre-written marketing texts to their contacts, a practice the lawsuit claims violates Washington state’s consumer protection laws. This system allowed Cash App to flood phone lines with advertisements while maintaining a thin veil of deniability, offloading the direct act of spamming onto its own user base in a bid to drive revenue growth.
This case raises critical questions about corporate accountability in the digital age, where privacy invasions can be repackaged as “growth hacking” and “referral marketing.”
Read on to explore the specific allegations, the regulatory gaps that enable such practices, and how the relentless pursuit of profit can lead corporations to build systems that profit from nuisance and the erosion of personal boundaries.
1. Introduction
In an era defined by the relentless monetization of data and relationships, a legal challenge against financial technology giant Block, Inc. casts a harsh light on the methods corporations use to expand their empires.
The lawsuit claims that the company’s popular Cash App platform engineered a marketing scheme that systematically violated consumer privacy. At its core, the complaint describes a system that financially incentivized users to send spam text messages to their friends and family, transforming personal networks into a corporate marketing channel.
This case is more than a dispute over unwanted text messages; it is a window into the architecture of modern corporate growth strategies under neoliberal capitalism. It demonstrates how companies can design systems that outsource illegal or unethical behavior to their customers, creating a buffer of plausible deniability while reaping the financial rewards.
The allegations against Cash App reveal a calculated business model that pits the promise of a small cash reward against the right to be free from unsolicited commercial intrusion, a conflict that exposes the deep-seated failures of a regulatory system struggling to keep pace with technological exploitation.
2. Inside the Allegations: A Lawsuit Against Engineered Spam
The class-action complaint against Block, Inc. presents a damning account of a corporate growth strategy allegedly built on illegal spam texting. The central claim is that Cash App violated Washington’s Commercial Electronic Mail Act (CEMA) by creating and promoting its “Invite Friends” referral program. This program wasn’t a passive feature; it was an aggressive marketing engine that, according to the lawsuit, “substantially assists and supports its users in sending illegal text messages.”
The lawsuit methodically deconstructs how Cash App allegedly facilitated this spam campaign. The company offered a cash bonus, typically $5, to both the referrer and the new user, but only after the new user linked a debit card and made a qualifying payment. This financial incentive was the fuel for the system, encouraging users to send invitations to as many people as possible.
The Cash App mobile application streamlined the process of sending these texts. With a few taps, a user could access their entire phone contact list within the app, select individuals, and send a pre-written, standardized marketing message.
The message, composed by Cash App, included a unique referral link to ensure the company could track the source of the new sign-up and properly reward the referrer. The lawsuit argues that this makes Cash App a direct assistant in the transmission of commercial messages, a practice explicitly forbidden by Washington law without the recipient’s prior consent.
The lead plaintiff, Kimberly Bottoms, a Washington resident, states she received these unsolicited commercial texts without ever having consented to them. The complaint includes a screenshot of a message she received on March 22, 2023, which read, “Hey! I’ve been using Cash App to send money and spend using the Cash Card. Try it using my code and you’ll get $5.” She also attests to receiving other, similar messages that she deleted to save space on her phone, highlighting the nuisance and invasion of her privacy.
A Timeline of Alleged Misconduct
The lawsuit outlines a pattern of behavior stretching back several years, defining the class of affected individuals as those who received these texts starting from September 8, 2019.
| Date | Event |
| Sept. 8, 2019 | The starting date for the proposed class of individuals who received unsolicited texts. |
| 2022 | Cash App reportedly earned $10.6 billion in revenue, with the lawsuit implying its growth was fueled by aggressive user acquisition tactics like the “Invite Friends” program. |
| Mar. 22, 2023 | Plaintiff Kimberly Bottoms received an unsolicited commercial text message promoting Cash App, which serves as a key piece of evidence in the complaint. |
| Nov. 14, 2023 | The class action complaint was filed in the Superior Court of Washington for King County. |
3. Regulatory Loopholes and Corporate Ethics
The allegations against Cash App illuminate a critical weakness in the regulatory framework governing digital communication. Corporations operating under the pressures of late-stage capitalism are incentivized to find and exploit the gray areas in consumer protection laws. The lawsuit contends that Cash App’s referral program is a textbook example of a company attempting to circumvent anti-spam regulations. Instead of sending the messages directly, which would be a clear violation, the company built a system to have its users do it for them, a practice the complaint calls a way to “mass market their services via text message without directly spamming consumers.”
This strategy exposes a philosophy of legal minimalism, where compliance is treated as an obstacle to be navigated rather than a moral or ethical baseline. The complaint alleges that Cash App “knows or consciously avoids knowing” whether its users have obtained consent from their contacts before sending the marketing texts. This “conscious avoidance” is a hallmark of corporate strategies designed to shield the company from liability. The system is built for plausible deniability, allowing the corporation to claim it is the user, not the company, who initiates the message, even though the company composes the text, provides the financial incentive, and creates the technological pathway for its transmission.
This case raises profound questions about the adequacy of laws like Washington’s CEMA in the face of such sophisticated circumvention tactics. When a company can build an automated system that encourages millions of users to violate a statute for a small fee, it challenges the very spirit of consumer protection. The regulatory failure lies in the law’s inability to fully account for a business model that outsources its marketing and its legal risk to an atomized and incentivized user base.
4. Profit-Maximization at All Costs
The “Invite Friends” program, as described in the lawsuit, is a clear manifestation of a corporate culture fixated on profit-maximization above all else. The complaint explicitly states that Cash App’s revenue growth “depends on our ability to retain existing sellers and customers, attract new sellers and customers, and increase sales to both new and existing sellers and customers,” quoting a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. This imperative for perpetual growth drives companies to adopt aggressive marketing tactics that push ethical and legal boundaries.
Every feature of the referral program was seemingly optimized for user acquisition and, ultimately, revenue. While the app is free to download, profit generation begins almost immediately after a new user is acquired. The lawsuit details a fee structure that capitalizes on user activity, ensuring that a growing user base translates directly into a growing revenue stream.
Here is a breakdown of the fees Cash App charges its users, illustrating how the company monetizes the customers brought in through its referral program:
| Transaction Type | Fee |
| Send from credit card | 3% |
| Instant Deposit (from Cash App to bank) | 0.5%–1.75% ($0.25 minimum) |
| ATM withdrawal (in-network & out-of-network) | $2.50 |
| Paper Money Deposit | $1.00 |
This fee structure reveals the economic logic behind the alleged spam campaign. Each new user acquired through an unsolicited text message represents a potential stream of revenue from transaction fees. The $5 referral bonus is not a gift; it is a calculated customer acquisition cost, an investment the company expects to recoup many times over from the fees it will charge that new user. This model transforms a violation of consumer privacy into a profitable, scalable, and predictable component of the company’s business strategy.
5. The Economic Fallout of Growth Hacking
While the immediate harm of an unwanted text message may seem minor, the systemic practice alleged in the lawsuit has broader economic implications. When corporations build business models around skirting regulations, they create an unfair competitive landscape. Businesses that abide by consumer protection laws and invest in legitimate, consent-based marketing are placed at a disadvantage against those willing to exploit legal loopholes for rapid growth.
This behavior externalizes costs onto the public. The time and mental energy spent deleting spam, the data charges incurred by receiving unsolicited messages, and the erosion of trust in digital communications are all small but cumulative costs borne by consumers, not the corporation. The lawsuit seeks to reclaim some of that cost by demanding statutory damages of $500 per violation, a figure intended to recognize that the harm is not merely a nuisance but an infringement on legally protected rights.
Furthermore, this model of “growth hacking” reinforces a destructive economic cycle. It prioritizes short-term user acquisition metrics over long-term sustainability and customer trust. In a neoliberal framework that lionizes disruption and rapid scaling, such tactics are often celebrated in investment circles, creating market pressure for other companies to adopt similarly aggressive, ethically questionable strategies to keep up. The result is a race to the bottom where consumer privacy and ethical conduct are casualties of the relentless pursuit of market share.
6. Public Health Risks in the Digital Age
The concept of public health extends beyond physical ailments to encompass the mental and social well-being of a community. In the digital age, the constant barrage of unsolicited messages, notifications, and advertisements contributes to a state of cognitive overload and anxiety. The lawsuit against Cash App touches upon this modern public health concern by defining the company’s alleged spam texts as a “nuisance” that “invaded” the plaintiff’s privacy.
These are not trivial harms. The relentless intrusion into personal digital spaces undermines an individual’s sense of security and control. For many, a smartphone is an essential tool for work, family, and emergency communication. When these channels are clogged with unwanted marketing, it degrades their utility and can create a background level of stress and irritation. The plaintiff’s testimony that she “did not understand why she was receiving annoying and harassing spam texts” speaks to the disorientation and frustration that such practices cause.
In a broader sense, business models that rely on overwhelming consumers with unsolicited messages contribute to the degradation of the digital commons. They erode the foundational trust necessary for healthy communication ecosystems to function. When every text message from an unknown number is potentially a marketing ploy, people become more guarded, less open, and more suspicious. This slow-motion poisoning of our digital environment is a significant, if often overlooked, public health consequence of a corporate culture that sees every phone number as a lead and every personal relationship as a potential marketing opportunity.
7. Exploitation of Users as Unwitting Marketers
A particularly insidious aspect of the system described in the lawsuit is its exploitation of the existing user base. Cash App allegedly transformed its customers into an unpaid, outsourced marketing team, leveraging their personal relationships and contact lists to drive corporate growth. This business model is a hallmark of late-stage capitalism, where the lines between consumer, product, and laborer are increasingly blurred.
Users participating in the “Invite Friends” program are not traditional employees, yet they perform a marketing function for the company in exchange for a small, conditional payment. The company provides the tools, the script, and the financial incentive, effectively directing a massive, decentralized labor force without affording them any of the protections or rights of actual employees. The lawsuit claims Cash App “enable[s] their users to spam consumers for them,” a disturbing description of this exploitative dynamic.
This model is profoundly alienating. It monetizes personal relationships, encouraging individuals to view their friends and family as potential sources of a $5 bonus. The trust inherent in a personal recommendation is co-opted and commodified, turned into a tool for corporate customer acquisition.
By designing a system that makes it easy and financially tempting to spam one’s own contacts, the company creates a framework where users participate in the degradation of their own social networks for a nominal fee, while the corporation reaps the substantial long-term profits.
8. Community Impact: The Erosion of Digital Space
The alleged practices of Cash App inflict damage that extends beyond individual annoyance into the fabric of community trust. Personal relationships are the bedrock of community, and the “Invite Friends” program is accused of systematically corroding them by turning acts of personal connection into commercial transactions. When a friend’s recommendation is no longer distinguishable from a paid corporate endorsement, the authenticity of interpersonal communication is debased.
This erosion of trust has a tangible community impact. The lawsuit notes that the plaintiff received a spam message from someone she did not even know, demonstrating how such systems can be used to broadcast marketing to complete strangers. This transforms the shared digital space of text messaging, once a realm for personal connection, into a landscape of suspicion. Every unsolicited message becomes a potential intrusion, forcing individuals to be more guarded and less open, thereby weakening the social ties that form a healthy community.
9. The PR Machine: Corporate Spin Tactics
The very name of the program, “Invite Friends,” is a masterpiece of corporate public relations, masking a calculated marketing operation under the guise of friendly sharing. The lawsuit pierces this veil, describing “refer-a-friend marketing” as a method for companies to “mass market their services via text message without directly spamming consumers.” This framing sanitizes the act, making it sound collaborative and social rather than commercial and intrusive.
This use of language is a deliberate tactic to manage reputation and obscure the underlying mechanics of the system.
By calling it an “invitation,” the company reframes what is essentially an unsolicited advertisement as a welcome gesture. This linguistic spin is crucial for encouraging user participation; few would be willing to “Spam My Contacts for $5,” but many will “Invite Friends.” The PR effort is embedded in the design of the app itself, creating a user experience that launders a corporate marketing campaign through the social credibility of its own customers.
10. Wealth Disparity & Corporate Greed
The economic arrangement at the heart of the “Invite Friends” program offers a distressing illustration of modern wealth disparity. According to the complaint, Cash App generated revenues of $10.6 billion in a single year, a figure built on the activities of its massive user base. In exchange for performing the critical labor of customer acquisition—and assuming the associated legal risks—a user is offered a mere $5 bonus.
This vast chasm between the value generated for the corporation and the compensation offered to the user is a microcosm of an economic system that disproportionately rewards capital over labor. The company leverages its platform to extract immense value from millions of small, user-initiated actions, concentrating the resulting wealth at the top.
The lawsuit implicitly critiques this structure by highlighting the immense corporate profits that are, in part, derived from a program that allegedly operates by paying people a pittance to violate state law on the company’s behalf.
11. Global Parallels: A Pattern of Predation
While the lawsuit against Cash App is grounded in the specific laws of Washington state, the alleged tactics are part of a global pattern of corporate behavior in the digital economy. Platform-based companies worldwide have recognized the power of referral marketing to achieve explosive growth at a low cost. This model, which leverages network effects and outsources marketing to users, has become a standard playbook for startups and tech giants alike.
This pattern of predation is a predictable outcome of venture capital-fueled growth mandates, which demand rapid scaling above all else. Similar to how gig economy platforms have classified workers as independent contractors to avoid labor costs and liabilities, the referral model described in the lawsuit offloads marketing functions and legal risks onto users. It represents a systemic trend where corporations devise increasingly sophisticated ways to benefit from labor and relationships without shouldering the corresponding responsibilities, a core feature of neoliberal capitalism’s global expansion.
12. Corporate Accountability Fails the Public
The legal remedies sought in the lawsuit—statutory damages and an injunction to stop the practice—highlight the limitations of corporate accountability in the current system. Even if the class action is successful, the financial penalty may be treated by a multi-billion-dollar corporation as simply a cost of doing business. Fines and settlements, without accompanying structural reform or executive liability, often fail to deter future misconduct.
This is a classic example of legal minimalism, where corporations may be forced to pay for a violation but are not compelled to change their underlying philosophy of prioritizing profit over compliance. The lawsuit asks the court to “adopt measures to ensure CEMA compliance,” but in a system where penalties are often just a rounding error on a balance sheet, the incentive to find the next loophole remains. True accountability would require penalties severe enough to make such schemes unprofitable and would hold the individuals who design and approve these systems responsible. Without that, the legal system merely forces a temporary, tactical retreat rather than a fundamental change in corporate behavior.
13. Pathways for Reform & Consumer Advocacy
This case underscores the urgent need for legal and regulatory reforms to protect consumers in the digital age. The lawsuit’s reliance on Washington’s CEMA shows the power of strong state-level consumer protection laws, but it also reveals their vulnerabilities. Reform should focus on closing the loopholes that companies like Cash App allegedly exploit.
Legislation could be strengthened to more explicitly define corporate responsibility for “assisting” in the transmission of illegal messages, making it harder for companies to claim ignorance or hide behind their users. This could include a legal presumption that a company is liable when it provides the financial incentive, the pre-written message, and the technological tool for a marketing campaign. Furthermore, empowering federal and state agencies with greater resources to proactively investigate and penalize these schemes, rather than relying on lengthy and expensive private class-action litigation, would create a more effective deterrent.
This Is the System Working as Intended
Ultimately, the Cash App case should not be viewed as an aberration or a failure of an otherwise functional system. It is a clear example of the system of late-stage capitalism working precisely as it was designed to. In an economic model that structurally prioritizes shareholder value and limitless growth, the creation of exploitative systems like the “Invite Friends” program is not a bug; it is a feature.
When profit is the ultimate measure of success, corporations are logically driven to innovate new methods of value extraction. This includes monetizing personal relationships, skirting regulations through clever system design, and shifting risk onto the most vulnerable parties.
The unethical actions of Cash App are the rational product of a system that rewards such behavior with market dominance and immense wealth.
The case is a powerful reminder that without fundamental changes to the rules and incentives governing our economy, we can expect to see this pattern of sophisticated, tech-enabled exploitation repeat itself across every sector.
Conclusion
The class-action lawsuit against Block, Inc. is a challenge to a business model that systematically devalues privacy, commodifies personal relationships, and offloads corporate responsibility onto its customers. The allegations paint a picture of a company that built a powerful engine for growth fueled by the very actions that consumer protection laws were created to prevent.
The human cost of this model is the degradation of our digital lives, turning essential communication tools into conduits for corporate advertising and fostering a climate of distrust.
The societal cost is the erosion of ethical standards and the reinforcement of an economic system where corporate giants can profit from the widespread nuisance they engineer.
This legal battle serves as a critical case study in the fight for digital rights and a harrowing reminder that in the absence of robust regulation and genuine corporate accountability, the relentless pursuit of profit will continue to encroach upon our most personal spaces.
Frivolous or Serious Lawsuit?
This is a serious lawsuit. It is not an opportunistic claim but a well-grounded legal challenge based on specific violations of Washington state law. The legal complaint meticulously documents the mechanics of Cash App’s “Invite Friends” feature, linking its design directly to the prohibited act of “assisting in the transmission” of unsolicited commercial text messages under the Commercial Electronic Mail Act.
The lawsuit’s legitimacy is further strengthened by its citation of legal precedent, specifically the Washington Supreme Court case Wright v. Lyft, Inc., which established that a violation of this act constitutes a per se violation of the state’s Consumer Protection Act. By identifying a clear statute, a direct precedent, a specific mechanism of harm, and a defined class of affected victims, the complaint demonstrates a meaningful legal grievance that addresses a systemic imbalance between corporate power and consumer rights.
Here is a different article on CashApp, but this one is about how CashApp paid a $15M fine after a massive data breach of millions of its users: https://evilcorporations.com/cash-app-forced-to-pay-15m-for-privacy-and-data-breaches-to-millions-of-its-users/
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NOTE:
This website is facing massive amounts of headwind trying to procure the lawsuits relating to corporate misconduct. We are being pimp-slapped by a quadruple whammy:
- The Trump regime's reversal of the laws & regulations meant to protect us is making it so victims are no longer filing lawsuits for shit which was previously illegal.
- Donald Trump's defunding of regulatory agencies led to the frequency of enforcement actions severely decreasing. What's more, the quality of the enforcement actions has also plummeted.
- The GOP's insistence on cutting the healthcare funding for millions of Americans in order to give their billionaire donors additional tax cuts has recently shut the government down. This government shut down has also impacted the aforementioned defunded agencies capabilities to crack down on evil-doers. Donald Trump has since threatened to make these agency shutdowns permanent on account of them being "democrat agencies".
- My access to the LexisNexis legal research platform got revoked. This isn't related to Trump or anything, but it still hurt as I'm being forced to scrounge around public sources to find legal documents now. Sadge.
All four of these factors are severely limiting my ability to access stories of corporate misconduct.
Due to this, I have temporarily decreased the amount of articles published everyday from 5 down to 3, and I will also be publishing articles from previous years as I was fortunate enough to download a butt load of EPA documents back in 2022 and 2023 to make YouTube videos with.... This also means that you'll be seeing many more environmental violation stories going forward :3
Thank you for your attention to this matter,
Aleeia (owner and publisher of www.evilcorporations.com)
Also, can we talk about how ICE has a $170 billion annual budget, while the EPA-- which protects the air we breathe and water we drink-- barely clocks $4 billion? Just something to think about....
