Meta is currently facing a significant legal challenge and damages claim in Spain, where media owners are pursuing a lawsuit alleging that the company's failure to have a valid legal basis for processing individuals' data for advertising purposes under EU data protection regulations also constitutes a breach of competition laws for which they should be compensated financially.
The lawsuit is being brought by AMI, an association of newspaper owners with more than 80 members, including publishers of well-known newspapers like El País, ABC, and La Vanguardia. The litigants are seeking over €550 million (~$600 million) in damages for what they claim is Meta's systematic and widespread non-compliance with the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
The lawsuit alleges that Meta has repeatedly violated data protection laws by tracking and using personal data for advertising profiling without the consent of users, giving the company an unfair competitive advantage in the market. The legal action contends that 100% of Meta's regional revenue was unlawfully obtained as a result.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, was previously fined €390 million in January after EU data protection authorities determined that performance of a contract was not a valid legal basis for the company to track and profile users for targeted advertising. This GDPR decision confirmed Meta's breach of the law and paved the way for additional privacy lawsuits against the company.
AMI's lawsuit focuses on Meta's advertising practices from May 2018 (when the GDPR came into effect) to July 2021, but the complainants are considering extending the timeframe to account for Meta's ongoing non-compliance.
In response to the legal challenges, Meta has changed its legal basis for ads processing in the EU multiple times, most recently claiming consent as the basis for its tracking-ad business. However, critics argue that the company's approach to obtaining consent is coercive and does not meet the GDPR's requirements for freely given consent.
Privacy groups like noyb, which originally filed a GDPR complaint against Meta in May 2018, are also challenging Meta's latest consent mechanism. The issue raises questions about the legality and fairness of tracking practices, particularly in the context of online news websites that use similar cookie-based consent models.
Meta's legal battles highlight the ongoing tension between privacy rights, data protection regulations, and advertising practices in the digital space. As these cases unfold, they could have significant implications for how tech companies collect and use personal data for targeted advertising.
