A Commercial Court in Madrid has sentenced Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, to pay 479 million euros to 87 Spanish digital press publishers and news agencies for unfair competition by failing to comply with data protection regulations, as announced today by the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ).
“It is a historic judicial victory,” celebrated this morning the Information Media Association (AMI), which brings together these 87 Spanish digital press publishers, among which are the country’s main newspapers, provincial press and digital websites of radio stations. Europa Press and Radio Blanca, which are not part of the AMI, will also be compensated with 2.57 million and 13,563 euros, respectively.
The resolution partially upholds the lawsuit filed by the Spanish digital press that alleged that the technology multinational’s advertising has improperly used protected personal data of the users of these two social networks, which has given it a “significant competitive advantage.” Specifically, the Information Media Association (AMI) accused the company of “illegitimately” using the data of its users in Spain between the years 2018 and 2023 to boost its segmented advertising business.
The lawsuit claimed from Meta more than 500 million for the group of media and news agencies that are members of the association. The ruling also stipulates that the media will receive more than 60 million euros in interest, in addition to the amount owed.
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According to the court resolution, since the royal decree that adapts Spanish legislation to European data protection regulations came into force in May 2018 until August 2023 – when Meta changed the legal basis for the consent of its users – the company earned more than 5,281 million euros by violating the royal decree. For this reason, it considers that the income it obtained during the period should be distributed to the rest of the competitors in the Spanish advertising market, among them, the Spanish digital press. To make this distribution, “it is necessary to know what market share the digital press had during those five years and allocate the money based on the share. When this distribution is made, the million-dollar amounts that lead this news come out,” the CGPJ elucidates in its statement.
The resolution, which has not yet been signed, could establish a relevant precedent for the Spanish advertising sector. In its statement, the CGPJ highlights that digital press advertising in Spain had to compete with the segmented advertising of Meta, which violated the law by processing millions of personal data of Facebook and Instagram users. These data were obtained both through Meta’s own platforms and from “other internet pages that users browsed.” “The illicit processing of this enormous amount of personal data gave Meta a competitive advantage that the Spanish digital press could not match,” the statement states.
The sentence comes the same week in which the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, announced that a commission of the Congress of Deputies would investigate Mark Zuckerberg’s technology company for possible violations of the privacy of its Facebook and Instagram users.
