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Facebook Fights Back Against £3B UK Mass Action Over Market Dominance

By  |  January 30, 2023

On Monday Facebook asked a London tribunal to block a collective lawsuit valued at up to £3 billion (S$4.9 billion) over allegations the social media giant abused its dominant position to monetise users’ personal data.

Meta Platforms, the parent company of the Facebook group, is facing a mass action brought on behalf of around 45 million Facebook users in Britain.

Legal academic Liza Lovdahl Gormsen, who is bringing the case, said Facebook users were not properly compensated for the value of personal data that they had to provide to use the platform.

Read more: Facebook Loses Most Of UK Appeal Over Giphy Deal

Her lawyers said users should get compensation for the economic value they would have received if Facebook was not in a dominant position in the market for social networks.

But Meta said the lawsuit was “entirely without merit” and should not be allowed to proceed. Its lawyers said the claimed losses ignore the “economic value” Facebook provides.

Lovdahl Gormsen’s lawyers on Monday asked the Competition Appeal Tribunal to certify the case under the UK’s collective proceedings regime – which is roughly equivalent to the class action regime in the United States.