‘Predatory’ U.S. tech titan Meta Platforms (META) has been ordered to pay Spanish media organizations around $552 million in compensation for “unfair competition.”
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Media Survival
A Spanish court ruled today in favor of Spain’s main media association AMI, which filed a lawsuit in 2023 against the Facebook owner. It accused Meta of creating the unfair competition by “systematically” breaking the law around obtaining users’ content to create personalized advertising from their data between May 2018 and July 2023.
The Madrid-based commercial court said that Meta had gained a “significant competitive advantage” in its digital advertising sales by violating the data protection rules.
“This isn’t a case that affects only AMI’s outlets, it has implications for media worldwide,” AMI director general Irene Lanzaco said. “What’s at stake is the very survival of news media, which is being threatened by the predatory behaviour of a platform like Meta, acting with no regard for our legal framework.”
Meta executives told the trial that user data mattered less than algorithms to generate personalized advertising. The company’s lawyer, Javier de Carvajal, urged the court to dismiss the compensation claims, calling them “unsupported by evidence.”
Meta Feels the Heat
The compensation is to be paid out to 87 media outlets. This includes media groups represented by AMI such as Prisa, owner of Spain’s top-selling daily newspaper El Pais; Vocento, which publishes the conservative daily ABC; and Unidad Editorial, whose titles include daily El Mundo.
Spanish radio and television stations have launched a separate lawsuit against Meta for the same reasons, seeking nearly $200 million.
It is why legal and regulatory issues are such key risks for innovative tech stocks like Meta – see below:
More heat in Spain is coming directly from Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, who said yesterday that Spain would investigate Meta for allegedly violating millions of users’ privacy. He has summoned Meta to answer these claims before parliament.
The ruling adds to a growing clampdown on U.S. tech in Europe, both by independent states and the EU. Just this week the European Commission launched an investigation into whether Amazon (AMZN) and Microsoft (MSFT) are cloud computing ‘gatekeepers’ and as such should adhere to its digital rules.
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