UK court kicks out Meta bid to block £2.3bn class action

Meta’s week has gone from bad to worse; just days after the EU’s top court ruled it must limit the data it uses in advertising, Britain’s antitrust tribunal has rejected a second attemtp to block a £2.3bn class action accusing the Facebook owner of exploiting its users’ data.

The class action is being brought on behalf of 45 million Facebook users by legal academic Dr Liza Lovdahl Gormsen, who claims that “Facebook has struck an unfair bargain with its users” over collection of their data on their activities outside of the main site.

This, Dr Lovdahl Gormsen maintains, means users are forced to give up this information as a condition of accessing the Facebook platform, in a “take-it-or-leave-it” offer.

Her original claim was refused in 2023, but a revised version was given the green light in February by the Competition Appeal Tribunal.

However, Meta, which insists the claim “remains entirely without merit” has now launched two unsuccesful bids to block the case.
Earlier this week, the court ruled that the “complex” issues should be determined at trial.

The tech giant has yet comment on the decision but maintains that it is “committed to giving people meaningful control” of the information they share on its platforms and to “invest heavily to create tools that allow them to do so”.

Earlier this week, Austrian privacy activist and lawyer Max Schrems scored yet another victory in his long-running battle with Meta over the use of personal data for advertising.

The European Court of Justice ruling will have widespread consequences for the entire online ad industry by forcing all companies to limit the use of data for advertising purposes, as well as prevent them from using publicly available personal data beyond the originally intended purposes for publication.

Schrems lawyer Katharina Raabe-Stuppnig said at the time: “Meta has basically been building a huge data pool on users for 20 years now, and it is growing every day. However, EU law requires ‘data minimisation’.

“Following this ruling only a small part of Meta’s data pool will be allowed to be used for advertising – even when users consent to ads. This ruling also applies to any other online advertisement company, that does not have stringent data deletion practices.”