Class Certification Denied for Facebook Users in Meta Antitrust Suit

A proposed class of Facebook users (plaintiffs) sought more than $50 billion in damages from Meta. The plaintiffs claimed that Meta illegally acquired and maintained a monopoly in a purported personal social networking services market by deceiving users about Facebook’s data collection and privacy practices. Plaintiffs argued that, in a competitive market, Meta would be forced to pay users $5 a month for use of their personal data. Compass Lexecon experts Dennis Carlton, Anindya Ghose, and John List submitted testimony on the merits of plaintiffs’ antitrust claims on behalf of Meta.

On January 24, 2025, US District Judge James Donato ruled in favor of Meta and denied class certification for the plaintiffs. The judge noted that, with respect to antitrust injury, the “certification request rises or falls on the validity and reliability of the opinions of the user plaintiffs’ economist.” Judge Donato concluded that user plaintiffs had not demonstrated that their economist’s “conclusions about antitrust injury are anything more than a fanciful application of economic theory untethered to real-world evidence about the alleged PSNS market.”

Compass Lexecon worked closely with attorneys at WilmerHale, including David Gringer, Sonal Mehta, Alex Miller, and Tom White, who successfully represented Meta.