A UK class action alleges Facebook coerced 45 million users into providing personal data that resulted in billions gained in ad revenue for Meta, but no benefit for users. This follows a similar EU case that found Facebook in violation of GDPR but did not focus on monetary harms as this does. The case still must be certified by the UK Competition Appeal Tribunal before proceeding.
Return on investment is important but what about sustainability? Well, 95% of IT leaders said it’s high priority for their own companies and when picking suppliers. But 87% said they’d ultimately prioritize commercial objectives over sustainability when faced with economic challenges. Are you surprised?
While the US still doesn’t have a federal data privacy law, it does have the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPN) – a video rental-era holdover of a law that disallows sharing video viewership data without consent. Chick-Fil-A, which has been using a Meta pixel tracker for an ongoing series of Christmas videos, is facing a class action similar to VPPA lawsuits brought against nearly 50 other organizations, including the NBA, GameStop, CNN and BuzzFeed.
The U.S. Department of Justice has formally requested the sale of the Chrome browser among other measures following last August’s guilty verdict in its search advertising antitrust suit (not to be confused with last week’s guilty verdict in the adtech antitrust lawsuit). Google is asking for a much narrower focus on deals to be the default search engine for Apple, Mozilla and others. There will be a three-week hearing on the government’s proposals.