Facebook/Meta face $3.2 billion class action lawsuit for abusing market dominance

Amongst social networks, Facebook is notorious for demanding you use your real name and demanding your phone number for 2FA and then using it for contact matching.

The company is now being challenged for abusing its market dominance to suck up the private data of 44 million citizens in the UK.

The class-action lawsuit is being filed by Liza Lovdahl Gormsen, competition law academic and senior adviser to Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) with  London’s Competition Appeal Tribubal, on behalf of people in Britain who had used Facebook between 2015 and 2019.

“In the 17 years since it was created, Facebook became the sole social network in the UK where you could be sure to connect with friends and family in one place,” Lovdahl Gornsen said. “Yet, there was a dark side to Facebook; it abused its market dominance to impose unfair terms and conditions on ordinary Britons, giving it the power to exploit their personal data.”

Lovdahl Gormsen says besides collecting data directly Facebook’s Pixel technology allows it to build an “all-seeing picture” of Internet usage and generate valuable, deep data profiles of users. The company famously created profiles for people who are not even registered with their network.

Unless Facebook users opt-out, they are automatically included in the class-action lawsuit.

via Reuters