A competition legal expert backed by a powerful litigation fund is set to mount a multi-billion dollar class action suit against Facebook for breaching competition law by abusing its dominance of social networking in the U.K. If the action is successful, Facebook will have to pay more than $2 billion in damages to users in the UK.
The class action lawsuit was lodged against Meta, Facebook's parent company, yesterday with the U.K.'s Competition Appeal Tribunal in London.
The unusual approach claims that Facebook should pay compensation to 44 million U.K. users for the exploitation of their data between 2015 and 2019. It is saying that Facebook took all the personal and private data of its users, who, due to Facebook's dominance, had no other viable social platform, and in return all its users got, in effect, the ability to post pictures of babies and kittens to their friends and family.
The action is being mounted by an international competition law expert who has made submissions before the U.K. Parliament regarding Facebook's market dominance.
The case rests on the idea that Facebook set an unfair price for U.K. users.
The U.K. users gave up their personal data in exchange for free access to the social network.
The key to the case is that Facebook tracked its users on other websites and generated a social graph of them, not just by locking them into its platform.
The Cambridge Analytica scandal was a good example of how user profiles can be used to illustrate market exploitation.
The lawyers for Dr Lovdahl Gormsen wrote to Meta to inform them of the claim. The class of people affected are all people who used Facebook in the U.K. during the period 1 October 2015 to 31 December 2019.
The class action against Meta is the first of its kind in England and Wales. The 4 million U.K. Facebook users will not need to join the case to seek damages, but will be part of the claim if they opt-out.
Innsworth is one of the largest funders of litigation in the world. Consumer class action claims have been brought before by Innsworth and Emanuel.
Meta is facing a consumer class action in the U.S., regulatory action around the world and an antitrust suit from the FTC in the U.S. that could break it up from the platforms.
In 17 years since it was created, Facebook has become the sole social network in the UK. Facebook abused its market dominance to impose unfair terms and conditions on ordinary Britons, giving it the power to exploit their personal data. I will be starting a case to get billions of pounds of damages for the 44 million Britons who had their data exploited by Facebook.
I asked Dr Lovdahl if Facebook could argue that there were other social networks available, such as Twitter or Myspace.
I don't think people can connect to their family and friends in the same way on social media. She said that Facebook is unique in how it is done.
The action is based on the ubiquity of the Facebook logo on other websites. I asked what the significance was to the case.
Dr Lovdahl Gormsen said to imagine yourself as a Facebook user. You may be aware that your data will be used. When you use a third-party website, that's not related to Facebook. That means that Facebook has created a lot of data points on you that you didn't know you had signed up for.
She argues that the vast majority of users have no idea how to remove themselves from the platform, even though it is possible.
The director of the Competition Law Forum, a non-Governmental advisor to the International Competition Network, and a Senior Research Fellow at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law are just some of the things Dr Lovdahl Gormsen does.
At the time of publication, Facebook had not replied to the request for comment.
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