Class Action against Facebook & Meta

No sooner had the ink dried on my recent article on a Class Action being brought against BT, another even larger claim has hit the headlines.

In this instance the Competition Appeal Tribunal will determine a claim on behalf of approximately 44 Million UK Facebook users following permission to proceed being handed down on 15th February 2024.

The final hearing brought under Section 18 of the Competition Act 1998 should be determined no later than early 2026, with damages of up to £3 billion being sought, for users who held Facebook accounts between 2016 and 2023.

The Claim brought by Dr Liza Lovdahl Gormsen asserts that Facebook and its platforms abused their dominant market position, by making it a condition that users’ data would be shared with third party advertisers. The more data Meta/Facebook had on the users enabled its advertisers to target them more accurately, enabling Facebook to increase its own charges to the advertisers.   

Meta are opposing the Claim when asserting that it was “committed to giving people meaningful control” of the data, they shared on its platforms, including Instagram and others and had invested heavily in tools for that purpose.

Interestingly in 2023 Meta were reported as having paid out the equivalent of £583m in a similar case to Facebook account holders in the US.

Another case of watch this space………