Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, scored a legal victory Tuesday when a federal judge in San Francisco dismissed a lawsuit accusing the Menlo Park tech firm of misleading users about its privacy practices to maintain its social media dominance.
U.S. District Judge James Donato granted Meta’s request for a summary judgment halting a trial that had been scheduled for November, according to Reuters.
The ruling came after the court barred a key expert witness for the plaintiffs, effectively leaving them unable to demonstrate any damages.
The lawsuit had been brought by three Facebook users who claimed that Meta misrepresented its data protection policies to suppress competition. Reuters reported that the plaintiffs argued that users should be compensated for handing over personal data to use the platform and had even planned to call CEO Mark Zuckerberg to testify.
Meta denied the allegations, telling the court that it competes fairly with rivals such as YouTube and TikTok. The company welcomed the decision in a Tuesday statement that the outcome in U.S. District Court in San Francisco “confirms what we have known from the beginning — the plaintiffs’ claims are without merit.”
Earlier this year, the San Francisco judge had already curtailed the consumer case by rejecting attempts to certify it as a class action lawsuit.
The court also declined to accept expert findings that suggested Meta might have paid users around $5 a month for their data in a competitive environment. The plaintiffs had sought both a judicial order to restore competition in the social networking market and damages of about $240 each.
Despite this win, Meta continues to face legal challenges. A separate antitrust lawsuit filed by advertisers, who claim they paid inflated rates for advertising on Facebook, is still pending before Donato, who has yet to decide whether that case can proceed as a class action.
This week’s ruling is the latest legal victory by Meta. In November 2024, a federal judge dismissed a suit brought by a professor who wants to build a tool that allows Facebook users to unfollow everyone in their feed. Less than a month earlier, Meta Platforms and CEO Mark Zuckerberg won the dismissal of a lawsuit claiming they misled shareholders in Meta's proxy statement.
Those victories were followed in January by the announcement that Meta had agreed to pay President Donald Trump $25 million to settle a 2021 federal lawsuit alleging First Amendment violations and other claims following the company suspending him from Facebook and Instagram in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
In a lawsuit filed Friday in federal court in San Jose, a London-based startup accused Meta of stealing a business model for Instagram Shopping. Reuters reported that in the lawsuit, Ollywan Limited, which once operated the now-defunct app Winstag, alleges that Meta used its dominance in social networking to crush competition.
