Meta faces a major legal challenge and damages claim in Spain that says the ad-tech giant’s years of failure to obtain a valid legal basis for processing people’s data for ads under EU data protection rules also constitutes an anti-competitive breach and they should be financially compensated for it. .
AMI, an association of newspaper owners with over 80 members including newspaper publishers El Pais, ABC And La Vanguardia, behind the suit. The litigants are seeking more than €550 million (~$600 million) for what they describe as Meta’s “systematic and widespread non-compliance” with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
“Meta has repeatedly failed to comply [EU] “Data protection legislation, ignoring the regulatory requirements stipulating that citizens must consent to the use of their data for advertising profiling, as demonstrated by the various decisions of the competent European authorities on this matter,” they wrote in a press release in Spanish. [here translated into English using AI].
“The systematic and widespread use of personal data of users of the Meta platforms, tracked without their consent throughout their digital browsing, would have allowed the American company to offer to sell advertising space in the market based on an illegally obtained competitive advantage.” Continuing, their lawsuit stated that 100% of Meta’s regional revenues were obtained illegally.
Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, was hit with a €390 million fine last January after EU data protection authorities confirmed that performance of a contract was not a valid legal basis for tracking and profiling users to target them with ads.
The final GDPR decision — which took years to work its way through the regulation’s dispute resolution and decision-making processes but is now being appealed by Meta in the Irish courts — confirmed that the tech giant was violating the law, creating favorable conditions for private sector privacy claims ( Like this) that will be uploaded. So expect to see more of these suits popping up.
The AMI Challenge targets the processing of Meta ads during the period from when the GDPR came into force, in May 2018, until the end of July last year. However, the complainants do not rule out the possibility of extending the time frame of their claim to take into account what they call “Mita’s insistence on her non-compliance”.
Since the January penalty, Meta has twice changed the legal basis on which it claims to process ads in the region. At first it turned to a claim on a basis called legitimate interests. However, a separate (long-running) competition and privacy challenge against Meta’s super-profiling, brought by the German Competition Authority – which had previously been referred to the bloc’s top court – led to a decision by the European Court of Justice in July 2022 invalidating this ground as well.
AMI Challenge refers to October 27 “A binding and urgent decision” by the European Data Protection Board – which was issued following a request from the Norwegian Data Protection Authority in light of Meta’s continued processing of personal data without a valid legal basis in the months following the ECJ decision – to explain the possible extension of the time frame.
Last November, Meta switched to requiring consent as a legal basis for its ad tracking business in the European Union. However, the option designed for regional users requires them to choose between paying a monthly subscription for an ad-free version of its products or “opting in” to tracking and profiling. This is despite the GDPR stating that consent must be “freely given” in order for it to be lawfully obtained.
Meta’s latest attempt to try to separate its tracking ad business from EU privacy rules is already facing a challenge — with privacy and consumer rights groups saying the choice it offers users is illegal and unfair.
Although one notable irony here is that the use of a so-called “cookie paywall” to collect consent to tracking is a feature of a number of European newspaper sites – which require users to either pay a subscription to access the press or agree to be tracked in exchange for access. Unpaid.
Privacy group noybwhich was behind the original GDPR complaint in May 2018 against Meta’s legal basis for tracking and is now Challenge Meta’s recent “pay or accept” approach to approvalalso challenges newspapers over the cookie-blocking regime from 2021.
Meta has been contacted for comment on AMI’s lawsuit.