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Facebook Market Dominance Class Action Lawsuit Overview:
- Who: A senior advisor to Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority is suing Facebook for £2.3 billion.
- Why: The advisor says Facebook, now known as Meta Platforms, abused its market dominance and illegally made users hand over personal data for exploitation.
- Where: The class action is being brought in the UK.
Facebook, now known as Meta Platforms, abused the market dominance of its social media platform to make more than 44 million users agree to unfair terms and conditions while handing over their data, a new £2.3 billion class action lawsuit alleges.
Liza Lovdahl Gormsen, a senior adviser to Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), has notified Facebook about the lawsuit she is filing on behalf of millions of people in Britain who used Facebook between 2015 and 2019, the BBC reports.
Gormsen claims Facebook abused its market dominance “to impose unfair terms and conditions on ordinary Britons, giving it the power to exploit their personal data.”
That data allowed Facebook to build a highly detailed picture of each person’s internet use, leading to “excessive profits” for the company, she says.
The company illegally collected and exploited the data of 44 million users, who are due compensation, according to Gormsen.
The class action is being filed as an “opt-out” lawsuit, whereby anyone living in the UK who used Facebook at least once between 2015 and 2019 will be part of the claim—unless they choose to opt-out.
The lawsuit is set to be heard by London’s Competition Appeal Tribunal. It alleges Facebook made billions of pounds by imposing unfair terms and conditions that demanded consumers surrender valuable personal data to access the network.
Meta has hit back, telling the BBC people used Facebook’s services because it delivered value for them.
The company countered that Facebook users have “meaningful control of what information they share on Meta’s platforms and who with.”
“We have invested heavily to create tools that allow them to do so,” the social media giant said.
Facebook Lawsuits Plague Meta After Name Change
The new class action lawsuit lodged against Meta comes on the heels of another filed last year alleging Facebook allowed a third party to secretly scrape private data from user accounts and networks without their permission.
It also comes days after Facebook lost an attempt to strike out an antitrust lawsuit by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in the United States.
A DC federal judge had previously dismissed the complaint against Facebook after determining it wasn’t specific enough about what markets the company had monopolized.
The FTC’s amended complaint survived, however, with the judge calling it “far more robust and detailed” in an opinion filed last week.
What do you think of the lawsuits being filed against Facebook over improper data use? Let us know in the comments.
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