83 SPANISH MEDIA SUES META FOR UNFAIR COMPETITION
December 4, 2023
Note taken from El Periódico de España, part of the Prensa Ibérica group.
The Asociación de Medios de Información (AMI) has filed a lawsuit, on behalf of 83 Spanish media outlets, against Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, among other social networks. The lawsuit is filed for “its continued, systematic and massive non-compliance with European data protection regulations”, in the period between May 25, 2018 and until at least July 31, 2023.
The publishers allege that, as evidenced by the various rulings of the competent European authorities, Meta has repeatedly failed to comply with EU law by ignoring the regulatory requirement that citizens must consent to the use of their data for advertising profiling. In particular, this claim could be extended by Meta’s persistence as derived from the injunction issued last October 27th by the European Data Protection Committee.
According to the plaintiffs, Meta’s behavior determines that 100% of the technology giant’s revenues from the sale of targeted advertising “have been obtained in an illegitimate manner”. The systematic and massive use of personal data of the users of Meta’s platforms, “tracked without their consent throughout their digital navigation, would have allowed the American company to offer on the market the sale of advertising space from a competitive advantage illegitimately obtained”.
The media are claiming 550 million euros, some 598 million dollars, from Meta.
The president of AMI, José Joly Martínez de Salazar, highlighted the importance of this unprecedented action, which shows how “the technology giant has built its dominant position in the advertising market by disregarding the regulations designed to protect the fundamental right to privacy of European citizens, and generating an obvious damage to the Spanish media to the point of jeopardizing its sustainability and, therefore, the democratic quality of the country”.
Likewise, the president of AMI has underlined that, according to data recently published by the Spanish Ministry of Economy, the media are the second most digitized sector of the Spanish economy, only surpassed by the technology companies themselves. These data certify that “the media are pioneers in digitization in Spain and that they obtain an outstanding position in the digital field as a result of their constant innovation and their investment effort, despite the fact that the dominance of the digital ecosystem by large platforms prevents the media from obtaining a fair monetization”.
The AMI also calls on public and private sector advertisers to “entrust their advertising campaigns to safe, reliable and responsible media, respectful of citizens’ rights and committed to promoting the democratic quality of Spain, all in line with their ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) policies”.
The management of the action developed by the Spanish media has been entrusted to the law firm led by the Professor of Procedural Law, Nicolás González-Cuéllar.
This article was originally published in El Periódico de España, with whose authorization we reproduce it here.
