Meta faces trial over unfair competition case by Spanish Media

Facebook owner Meta Platforms will face a trial in October 2025 in Spain over a 551-million-euro ($582 million) complaint lodged by more than 80 media companies accusing it of unfair competition in advertising, a Madrid court said on Friday.

The hearings will be held on October 1 and October 2, the 15th Madrid commercial court said in a statement.

The AMI media association, which represents 87 Spanish media firms, filed a lawsuit last year alleging Meta violated EU data protection rules between 2018 and 2023.

The newspapers argue that Meta's "massive" and "systematic" use of the personal data of its Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp platform users gives it an unfair advantage in designing and offering personalised ads, which they say constitutes unfair competition.

A Meta spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Listed newspapers publishers Prisa, which owns El Pais newspaper, and Vocento, which owns ABC Newspaper, are among the complainants.

Separately, Spanish TV and radio broadcasters associations UTECA and AERC said last month they had filed a 160-million-Euro lawsuit against Meta on the same grounds.

The Spanish suits represent efforts by legacy media to fight tech giants in both courts and legislatures to preserve their revenue, arguing such firms should pay fair fees for using and sharing their content.

Some of these attempts have backfired in countries like Canada and Australia, where Meta has blocked users from reposting news articles.

In its other markets, Meta has been scaling back its promotion of news and political content to drive traffic and says news links now represent only a fraction of users' feeds.

The development follows clashes that the company is having with news publishers across the globe. For the unversed, Meta, earlier this year had said that it was considering blocking news content from its platforms in Australia after the government proposed that it pays a licensing fee to the news publishers.