Meta, formerly known as Facebook, considered the idea of paying users for the data it collected to enhance its advertising platform. The company disclosed that it had internally discussed compensating users of its apps, including WhatsApp and Instagram, but ultimately decided against it. This information came to light in a lawsuit where Meta is accused of engaging in anticompetitive practices to maintain its dominance in the social media advertising market.
Unsealed documents from the case revealed that Meta executives, such as CEO Mark Zuckerberg, COO Javier Olivan, and chief information security officer Guy Rosen, went to great lengths to gather data on competitors and replicate their features. The lawsuit, initiated by a group of advertisers in 2020, alleges that Meta's actions led to a monopoly in social media ads, resulting in inflated prices.
In response to expert testimony suggesting that Meta users could potentially charge $5 a month for their data if there was more competition, Meta argued that such claims were unfounded and should be disregarded. The expert estimated that Meta owes $50 billion in damages to the plaintiffs due to its market dominance and refusal to compensate users for their data.
Meta filed a motion to dismiss the case entirely, asserting that the lawsuit was linked to the Federal Trade Commission's challenge of Meta's acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp. The company contended that the claims made by the expert witness were baseless and lacked real-world support.
Meta's legal team argued that no company in any market has ever paid all its users as a competitive response, labeling the case as legally flawed. The court is set to decide on the admissibility of the expert testimony and the future of the lawsuit before it proceeds to trial.
