On February 15, 2024, the Competition Appeal Tribunal certified a class action brought by Liza Lovdahl Gormsen v. Meta. The action pertains to the unfair imposition of terms and conditions that permit Facebook to gather and use user data in exchange for access to the Facebook platform. The certification relied on an economic report from Professor Fiona Scott Morton supported by a CRA team including Oliver Latham, Christian Michel, Sam Marden, Ajay Pai, Joanna Young, and Shreyas Guntur.
The report proposed the use of a calibrated Nash bargaining model to assess a fair level of compensation for users to allow Facebook to track their behavior across the internet and thereby assess harm to the class. The model’s output would be based on the benefits that such tracking gave to Facebook’s advertising business and the privacy cost to users of giving their data up.
