Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Beijing, January 31 (Xinhua)-- Meta, the parent company of Facebook, asked a court in London on Monday to block a class action worth 3 billion pounds ($3.7 billion) accusing the social media giant of abusing its dominant position to monetize users' personal data.

The lawsuit concerns the interests of 4500 Facebook users in the UK.

Liza Lovdahl Gormsen, the legal scholar who filed the lawsuit, said the value of the personal data that Facebook users had to provide to use the platform had not been properly compensated.

Her lawyers say that if Facebook does not dominate the local social networking market, users should be compensated for the economic value they deserve.

But Meta said the lawsuit had "absolutely no legal basis" and should not be allowed to proceed. Its lawyers said the losses claimed in the lawsuit ignored the "economic value" provided by Facebook.

Gormsen's lawyers on Monday asked the Competition Court to prove the case under the British class action system, which is roughly equivalent to the class action system in the United States.

The approval of class action will depend on whether the court considers that individual cases can be properly dealt with together, rather than on the basis of their merits.

Ronit Kreisberger, a lawyer representing Gormsen, told the court that "Meta's data manipulation violates the ban on abuse by the leading company."

"there is no doubt that there is a reason for Meta to answer this question in the trial," Kreisberger said.

But lawyers representing Meta said the lawsuit mistakenly assumed that any "excess profits" it might make equated with economic losses suffered by Facebook's individual users.

Marie Demetriou said in court documents that this approach "did not take into account the significant economic value of the services provided by Facebook".

At the very least, Gormsen's estimate of the total loss of potential claimants-£3 billion, including interest-was "grossly exaggerated", she said.

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