Meta faces $596 million Spanish lawsuit for GDPR violation

The giant also faces further reputational damage in the US, as an academic claims that Meta used its financial heft to block her constitutional right to free speech

A group representing 83 Spanish media outlets has sued Meta for $596 million, citing unfair competition in the advertising market. The lawsuit filed by the Information Media Association (AMI) alleges that between 2018 and 2023 Meta violated the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR.)

According to the AMI, Meta "failed to comply with [the GDPR], ignoring the regulatory requirement that citizens must consent to the use of their data for advertising profiling." The complainants allege that a majority of the ads placed by Meta use personal data, the owners of which have not expressly consented to its use.

The GDPR mandates that any website requests authorisation to keep and use personal data.

The AMI further argues that Meta's "massive" and "systematic" use of personal data from Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp users gives the company an unfair advantage in designing and offering personalised ads, which it says constitutes unfair competition, putting the sustainability of the Spanish media as a whole at risk.

It was only in October this year that Meta introduced paid versions of Facebook and Instagram which eliminate ads entirely.

Because this lawsuit is based on the violation of EU law, it is possible that other EU countries could follow suit.

"Of course, in any other EU country, the same legal proceeding could be initiated," lawyer Nicolás González-Cuéllar, who is representing AMI in its suit, told Reuters.

Meta has already been fined for violating GDPR mandates.

Meta is also having to defend itself in the US, this time against claims that it has abrogated the right to free speech of one of the worlds leading experts on misinformation.

As reported in The Guardian, academic and misinformation expert Joan Donovan has made a legal filing with the US Education department and the Massachusetts attorney general claiming that she was fired by Harvard University for publicly criticising Meta - the same Meta which had pledged $500 million for Harvard from its charity foundation.

When whistleblower Frances Haugen leaked thousands of internal Facebook documents in 2021, Donovan published them on the Harvard website for anyone to see. She claims that Harvard began to treat her differently from that point, culminating in the loss of her job earlier this year.

In an email to The Washington Post, the Harvard Kennedy School said Donovan's departure was not related to Meta.