Facebook Seeks Respite From $4B UK Mass Action For Exploiting User Data

Meta Platforms, Inc META Facebook urged a London tribunal to block a collective lawsuit worth up to £3 billion ($3.7 billion) for allegedly abusing its influence to monetize users' data.
The social media giant faced a mass action from around 45 million Facebook users in Britain, Reuters reports.
Legal academic Liza Lovdahl Gormsen alleged that Facebook deprived users of compensation for using their data through its dominant position.
Also Read: Meta Takes Legal Action Against Voyager Labs, Accuses It For Alleged Data Scraping
Gormsen's lawyers urged the Competition Appeal Tribunal to certify the case under the U.K.'s collective proceedings regime, roughly equivalent to the class action regime in the U.S.
Ronit Kreisberger, representing Lovdahl Gormsen, told the tribunal, "Meta's data practices violate the prohibition on abusive conduct by dominant firms."
But lawyers representing Meta said the lawsuit wrongly assumes that any "excess profits" it might make equates to a financial loss suffered by individual Facebook users.
Last August, Meta reached a $37.5 million settlement regarding a 2018 lawsuit alleging Facebook of tracking user movements through their smartphones without permission.
The lawsuit claimed that Facebook violated California law and privacy policy by gathering data from users who turned off Location Services on their mobile devices.
Meta is involved in many other lawsuits globally, including regulatory action for allegedly abusing its dominant position.
Meta held $41.78 billion in cash and equivalents as of September 30.
Price Action: META shares traded lower by 2.56% at $147.85 on the last check Monday.

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