Since 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation (RGPD) of the European Union establishes the prohibition for users of internet services to be tracked in their digital activity for advertising purposes without their consent, but there is a company in which has since been stuck with this regulation: Meta. The company founded by Mark Zuckerberg was sued on Friday by the 83 Spanish news media that make up the Media Association (AMI), for unfair competition and claim compensation of 550 million euros for its "continued, systematic and massive breach of European data protection regulations” between May 2018 and July 2023.
The Spanish media believe, based on different resolutions of the European data protection authorities, that "Meta has repeatedly breached EU data protection legislation, ignoring the regulatory requirement that citizens must consent to the use of your data for advertising profiling”. These decisions by the regulators have been a constant since the implementation of the GDPR, which Meta has tried to dodge so far with little success.
At the beginning of November, the European Data Protection Board (JEPD) ordered the data protection regulator of Ireland - where Meta has its European headquarters - to prohibit its platforms from "any processing of personal data for the purposes of behavior based advertising”. This was a blanket order for all countries in the European Economic Area that generalized a ban established months ago by Norway's data protection regulator.
The publishers state in their lawsuit that "Meta's behavior determines that one hundred percent of the tech giant's revenue derived from the sale of segmented advertising has been obtained in an illegitimate manner."
For this reason, they report that the Californian company makes a "systematic and massive use of users' personal data" on its platforms, so that they are "tracked without their consent in all their digital browsing". These practices, according to the plaintiffs, "would have allowed the American company to offer the market the sale of advertising space based on an illegitimately obtained competitive advantage".
The president of AMI, José Joly Martínez de Salazar, emphasized after the lawsuit - in charge of the law firm headed by the professor of Procedural Law Nicolás González-Cuéllar - that Meta has built its position of dominance in the advertising market disregarding the regulations designed to protect the fundamental right to privacy of European citizens.
The fact that Meta tracks users' digital activity without their permission is a detriment to the Spanish media to the point of "putting its sustainability at risk" according to an information note from the AMI. Joly Martínez de Salazar recalled that the media are fundamental to the democratic quality of a country.
The president of the AMI observed that data recently published by the Ministry of the Economy show that the media is the second most digitized sector of the Spanish economy and is surpassed only by technology companies.
This leadership position in the digital field, which requires constant innovation and investment effort, has been achieved, as Joly Martínez de Salazar noted, despite the fact that the large technological platforms prevent the media from obtaining a fair monetization.
The AMI also called on advertisers, both in the public and private sectors, to entrust their advertising campaigns to information media that are "safe, reliable, responsible, respectful of citizens' rights and committed to promoting quality democracy of Spain".
The European data protection regulator's order for Meta to stop tracking European citizens' internet activity is binding and was notified to Meta on October 30. In a strategy to try to circumvent the ban, on the same day Mark Zuckerberg's company announced that in November it would establish paid subscription packages starting at 9.99 euros per month for its European users who do not want their data to be tracked .
Just as he announced, he got it going. If consent is not given for the tracking of data for advertising purposes, it offers to pay the fee, an approach which, if maintained, assumes that the guarantee of a right established by law only exists if a fee is paid. The JEPD announced that it took note of Meta's proposal, of an approach "based on consent as a legal basis", and that it would study it. In any case, the president of the regulatory body, Finland's Anu Talus, stated in a statement that "the contract is not an adequate legal basis for the processing of personal data carried out by Meta for behavior-based advertising" . "It's time for Meta (...) to put an end to the illegal treatment", he added.
Facebook and Instagram bring together around 250 million users in the regulated European area - which includes, in addition to the 27 EU countries, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway.
In July, the Court of Justice of the European Union determined that users of social networks are "free to refuse individually (...) to give their consent to certain data processing operations". In May, Meta was fined 1.2 billion euros for transferring data of European users to the US, which violates the RGPD.
