The trial between more than 80 Spanish media outlets and Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, which they accuse of unfair competition for not having respected the regulations on the protection of personal data, will take place in October 2025, announced Teodoro Ladrón Roda, a Judge from Madrid, Wednesday, November 27.
The magistrate set this date after a preview in a commercial court in the presence of the plaintiffs’ lawyers, represented by the News Media Association (AMI), the main professional media outlet in Spain, and those of Meta Ireland, the country where occurred on The headquarters of the technology giant are located in Europe.
AMI demands 550 million euros from Meta, which it accuses of having seriously infringed “systematic and massive” between May 25, 2018 and July 31, 2023 “European data protection legislation”which requires the consent of Internet users for the use of their data for advertising profiling purposes.
Meta denies “existence of any damage”
this practice “would have allowed the American group to offer (…) “the sale of advertising space on the basis of an illegitimately obtained competitive advantage”to the detriment of traditional media, which respected these rules, AMI stated when presenting its complaint in December 2023.
At Wednesday’s hearing, Meta’s lawyer, Javier de Carvajal, said the group denied the“existence of any damage” and that it had not breached European regulations.
Goal “claims that personal data is not used for personalized advertising and has not given it a competitive advantage”the plaintiffs’ lawyer, Nicolás González Cuellar, stressed to journalists.
Among the media groups represented by AMI are Prisa, owner of the newspaper The Country and the sports newspaper AS.but also Godo (The Vanguard, sports world…) and Vocento, which publishes the conservative newspaper alphabet.
Added to this association’s complaint is another for the same reasons presented by Spanish radio and television stations, which demand, in a separate case, some 160 million euros from the American group.
