The Competition Appeal Tribunal has had a busy time in 2024. In February permission has been granted to proceed to Dr Liza Lovdahl Gormsen in a Class Action seeking up to £3billion in damages for users holding Facebook accounts between 2016 and 2023.
It is asserted, that Meta 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 in turn to increase its own charges to the advertisers.
Like the Apple claim we’ve also commented upon, it is reported that Meta had paid out the equivalent of £583m in a similar previous case to Facebook account holders in the US. The final UK result, should be handed down by 2026, in the absence of a settlement between the parties.