Facebook is seeking to block a $3.7 billion UK mass lawsuit over allegations of market dominance abuse.
The social media giant, owned by Meta Platforms Inc, is facing a lawsuit brought on behalf of 45 million Facebook users in Britain.
The legal academic, Liza Lovdahl Gormsen, leading the case claims that Facebook users were not adequately compensated for the value of their personal data provided to use the platform.
Gormsen’s lawyers stated that users should receive compensation for the economic value they would have received if Facebook were not in a dominant position in the social networking market.
However, Meta claims the lawsuit is “entirely without merit” and should not be allowed to proceed, arguing that it wrongly assumes that any excess profits equal a financial loss suffered by individual Facebook users and takes no account of the economic value of the service provided by Facebook.
The Competition Appeal Tribunal will decide on certifying the case as a collective proceeding based on whether the individual cases can be dealt with together, rather than on their merits.
In court, Ronit Kreisberger representing Gormsen argued that Meta’s data practices violate the prohibition on abusive conduct by dominant firms and that “there is unquestionably a case for Meta to answer at trial”.
However, Marie Demetriou, representing Meta, stated that Gormsen’s estimate of the potential claimants’ total losses, which includes interest, is “at the very least wildly inflated”.
Source: ghstandard.com
