There is no peace for Facebook, or rather for Meta, given the recent rebranding of the company of Mark Zuckerberg. Apparently, in fact, the parent company of Facebook will face a new lawsuit in United Kingdom, where it was accused of abusing its position as a market leader and of having improperly exploited the data of the 44 million British users registered on the social network.
Facebook versus the UK
It just looks like that Facebook can’t stay out of the eye of the storm for more than a few months. This time, the United Kingdom has turned against the company that recently changed its name to Meta, accusing the parent company of using the data of millions of English users without consent, taking advantage of its position as market leader.
If found guilty in court, the tech giant would have to pay a fine equivalent to £ 2.3 billion, or about 3.2 billion dollars. A remarkable figure, even for an industry giant like Facebook, which has recently been selling its increasingly attacked reputation.
What Facebook should have violated several times would be the competition law, drawn up in 1998: according to the English legislators, Facebook would set an “unfair price” for access to the social network, or the provision of personal data.
It is certainly no secret, on the other hand that the revenue of the social network derives in large part from this data, which is sold to advertisers to create campaigns. marketing tailored according to the preferences shown by the users themselves. A profiling tool on balance, as stated by the legislator Lovdahl Gormsen: “Meta is exploiting users by taking their personal data without compensating them adequately for taking it”.
La class action
The lawsuit will take place at Competition appeal tribunal of London and will involve all UK residents and who have used Facebook at least once between 2015 and 2019; obviously this unless one voluntarily chooses to give up taking part in the cause. In short, it seems evident that the state wants to do things big and does not seem willing to let Zuckerberg’s company get away with it.
It is no coincidence that according to initial estimates the case could take six to twelve months to complete. Of course, as expected, Meta has already responded to the British accusations, firmly rejecting them: “Our users choose our services because we provide them with value and they have significant control over what information they share on Meta’s platforms and with whom”, a spokesperson explained.
In the meantime, we remind you that Meta is also currently under indictment by the US Federal trade commission, an institution that just a few days ago received the go-ahead to bring Zuckerberg’s company to court for violating antitrust regulations.
Therefore, a hellish 2022 is expected for Meta, which is now closed between two fires. All that remains is to wait for the developments of the affair.