LONDON: Facebook on Monday asked a London tribunal to block a collective lawsuit valued at up to 3 billion pounds ($3.7 billion) over allegations the social media giant abused its dominant position to monetise users’ personal data.
Meta Platforms Inc, the parent company of the Facebook group, is facing a mass action brought on behalf of around 45 million Facebook users in Britain.
Legal academic Liza Lovdahl Gormsen, who is bringing the case, said Facebook users were not properly compensated for the value of personal data that they had to provide to use the platform.
Her lawyers said users should get compensation for the economic value they would have received if Facebook was not in a dominant position in the market for social networks.
But Meta said the lawsuit was “entirely without merit” and should not be allowed to proceed. Its lawyers said the claimed losses ignore the “economic value” Facebook provides.
Lovdahl Gormsen’s lawyers on Monday asked the Competition Appeal Tribunal to certify the case under the UK’s collective proceedings regime – which is roughly equivalent to the class action regime in the United States.
A decision to certify collective proceedings will depend on whether the tribunal decides that the individual cases can appropriately be dealt with together, rather than on their merits.
Ronit Kreisberger, representing Lovdahl Gormsen, told the tribunal that “Meta’s data practices violate the prohibition on abusive conduct by dominant firms”.
“There is unquestionably a case for Meta to answer at trial,” Kreisberger argued.
But lawyers representing Meta said the lawsuit wrongly assumes that any “excess profits” it might make equates to a financial loss suffered by individual Facebook users.
This approach “takes no account whatsoever of the significant economic value of the service provided by Facebook”, Marie Demetriou said in court documents.
She said Lovdahl Gormsen’s estimate of potential claimants’ total losses – 3 billion pounds, including interest – is “at the very least wildly inflated”.
Facebook seeks to block $3.7 bln UK mass action over market dominance
https://arab.news/na59s
Facebook seeks to block $3.7 bln UK mass action over market dominance
- Tech giant claims lawsuit is “entirely without merit,” ignore added “economic value”
Pioneering Asharq Al-Awsat journalist Mohammed al-Shafei dies at 74
- Egyptian was known for his fearless coverage of terrorist, extremist groups
- One of handful of reporters to interview Taliban leader Mullah Omar in 1970s
LONDON: Mohammed al-Shafei, one of Asharq Al-Awsat’s most prominent journalists, has died at the age of 74 after a 40-year career tackling some of the region’s thorniest issues.
Born in Egypt in 1951, al-Shafei earned a bachelor’s degree from Cairo University in 1974 before moving to the UK, where he studied journalism and translation at the University of Westminster and the School of Oriental and African Studies.
He began his journalism career at London-based Arabic papers Al-Muslimoon and Al-Arab — both of which are published by Saudi Research & Publishing Co. which also owns Arab News — before joining Al-Zahira after Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
Al-Shafei joined Asharq Al-Awsat in 1991 and spent 15 years on the sports desk before shifting to reporting on terrorism. He went on to pioneer Arab press coverage in the field, writing about all aspects of it, including its ideologies and ties to states like Iran.
His colleagues knew him for his calm demeanor, humility and meticulous approach, marked by precise documentation, deep analysis and avoidance of sensationalism.
Al-Shafei ventured fearlessly into terrorist strongholds, meeting senior terrorist leaders and commanders. In the 1970s he was one of only a handful of journalists to interview Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban, and conducted exclusive interviews with senior figures within Al-Qaeda.
He also tracked post-Al-Qaeda groups like Daesh, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham and Boko Haram, offering pioneering analysis of Sunni-Shiite extremism and how cultural contexts shaped movements across Asia and Africa.
During the war on Al-Qaeda, he visited US bases in Afghanistan, embedded with international forces, and filed investigative reports from active battlefields — rare feats in Arab journalism at the time.
He interviewed Osama bin Laden’s son, highlighting a humanitarian angle while maintaining objectivity, and was among the few Arab journalists to report from Guantanamo, where his interviews with Al-Qaeda detainees shed light on the group’s operations.
Al-Shafei married a Turkish woman in London in the late 1970s, with whom he had a son and daughter. He was still working just hours before he died in London on Dec. 31.
