(Reuters) – On Tuesday, a U.S. Judge ruled that a lawsuit against Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:) alleging it of misleading advertisers regarding its “potential reach” tool may proceed as a collective action.

U.S. District Judge James Donato, San Francisco, has ruled that millions of people and businesses who paid to advertise on Facebook or its photo-sharing platform Instagram can sue together.

Meta did not respond immediately to our request for comments.

DZ Reserve, along with other advertisers, sued Facebook for inflating its advertising reach by increasing the potential number of viewers by up to 400% and charging artificially higher premiums for placements.

The report also stated that senior Facebook executives were aware for years of the fact that Facebook’s “potential reach” metric was inflated by fake and duplicate accounts. Yet, they didn’t do anything and continued to take steps to conceal it.

Donato dismissed Meta’s objections to class certification as “blunderbuss”. It claimed that the class was too broad, with “large sophisticated corporations” and individuals, as well as small businesses. And that damages would not be easy to calculate.

Donato stated that individual plaintiffs could sue collectively, since Meta would not be sued individually for more than a $32 premium.

Meta will likely be dismissed by the judge in late 2012, according to an expected ruling.