Report from Courthouse News
In Brief – A Spanish commercial court has ordered Meta to pay €479 million in damages to 87 Spanish media outlets for gaining an unlawful competitive advantage in advertising on its top platforms. The ruling follows a lawsuit brought in 2023 by the Spanish media association AMI. The court found that Meta violated the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by gathering and using personal data of its users without gaining valid legal consent, enabling the company to offer highly effective advertising services that represented “unfair competition” to media companies who could not offer equally effective advertising. AMI welcomed the judgment, calling it a milestone for protecting journalism, market fairness, and user privacy, arguing that Meta had harmed news outlets that followed the law. Meta rejected the allegations, calling the financial claim of the media companies baseless and vowing to appeal. A separate lawsuit from Spanish broadcasters is underway.
Context – As media companies saw more advertising spending shift over to the largest digital platforms, Google and Meta, the two biggest digital ad platforms, became of the target of a global industry campaign to compel governments to force them to pay media companies directly. Australia and France led the way in forcing payments. Australian legislation enacted in 2020 led Google and Meta start paying millions to its media companies in 2021. France combined a change in IP law creating “neighboring rights” with the threat of quick antitrust action to pressure Google to pay media companies for snippets used in search results. Meta soon signed media payments deals in France as well. However, Meta has since stopped agreeing to pay media companies when users post content on its platforms, threatening to block media stories instead. The Spanish route of simply ordering the company to make cash payments to media companies for past regulatory failings, rather than to users, the government, or any so-called victims, is certainly a direct route to achieve the long-sought-after payments. A similar media company lawsuit is underway in France.