Facebook, now renamed as Meta Platforms, is being sued in the United Kingdom for $3.2 billion over charges that it violated its market dominance by exploiting the personal data of 44 million users.
Meta was sued in a class action lawsuit yesterday in the UK Competition Appeal Tribunal in London.
According to the new approach, Facebook should compensate its 44 million British users for the exploitation of their data between 2015 and 2019.
In effect, it's claiming that Facebook seized all of its users' personal and private data - users who, as a result of Facebook's dominance, had no viable alternative social platform - and all they got in return was the chance to share photographs of infants and kittens with their friends and relatives.
Liza Lovdahl Gormsen, senior adviser to the Financial Conduct Authority in the United Kingdom, is suing Meta on behalf of people who used the social media platform in the United Kingdom, Reuters reported.
Meta is accused of requiring users to provide personal data in order to access the platform and earning billions of dollars as a result of the practice.
Facebook has been alerted of the claim by Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, the law firm representing Lovdahl Gormsen.
According to Facebook, users use its services because they provide value, and "they have meaningful control over the information they disclose on Meta's platforms and with whom they share it."
The case's central allegation is that Facebook "surrounded" its UK users not just by enclosing them and their data within its platform, but also by tracking them on other websites via the Facebook pixel, so generating extensive "social graph" data about them.
The judgment comes just days after Facebook lost an antitrust lawsuit brought by the Federal Trade Commission, one of the most significant challenges the U.S. government has mounted against a technology company in decades, as Washington seeks to rein in so-called Big Tech's immense market influence.
Facebook became the "single social network" in the UK in the 17 years since it was founded, Gornsen said, where "you could be certain to connect with friends and family in one spot."
On Tuesday, a federal judge in the U.S. ruled that the U.S. competition agency may pursue a breakup lawsuit against Meta.
The FTC is attempting to get Meta to sell Instagram and WhatsApp, in one of the most significant challenges to a technology company in recent years.
Meta earns 98% of its revenue globally from advertisers who may target certain demographics and customers thanks to the company's user profiles developed through their online activity.
