LONDON — Facebook on Monday blocks a class action lawsuit worth up to £3 billion ($3.7 billion) over allegations that the social media giant abused its dominant position to monetize users’ personal data. requested a court in London.
Meta Platforms Inc., the parent company of the Facebook group, is facing a large lawsuit filed on behalf of some 45 million Facebook users in the UK.
Legal scholar Liza Robdahl Gormsen, who is filing the lawsuit, said Facebook users were not adequately compensated for the value of the personal data they had to provide in order to use the platform.
Her lawyers said users should be compensated for the economic value they would have received had Facebook not been in a dominant position in the social networking market.
But Mehta said the lawsuit was “totally without merit” and should not be allowed to proceed. He said that
Lawyers for Lovdahl Golmsen asked the Court of Competitive Appeals on Monday to substantiate the case under the UK class action system, which is roughly equivalent to the US class action system.
The decision to certify a class action depends on whether the court determines that the cases can be properly handled together rather than on their individual merits.
Ronit Kreisberger, Lovdahl Gormsen’s attorney, told the court that “Meta’s data practices violate the prohibition against abuse by dominant companies.”
“There is no question that Meta has a case to answer at court,” Kreisberger argued.
But lawyers representing Meta said the lawsuit erroneously assumed that the “excess profits” Meta could earn were commensurate with the economic losses suffered by individual Facebook users.
This approach “has no consideration of the significant economic value of the services Facebook provides,” Marie Demetriou said in court documents.
She said Lovdahl Gormsen’s estimate of total potential claimant losses (£3 billion including interest) was “at least grossly overstated”.
Sam Tobin