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Facebook Faces Another Antitrust Class Action Lawsuit
By: Top Class Actions | February 16, 2021

A Wisconsin man is alleging Facebook has acquired monopoly power in the social media market — and that it’s hurting its millions of consumers, according to the latest class action lawsuit against the social media giant.

In a 75-page complaint filed in the District Court for the Northern District of California Monday, plaintiff Joe Kovacevich and his lawyers laid out claims that Facebook has achieved a monopoly “by means of predatory, exclusionary and anticompetitive conduct.”

Facebook allegedly engaged in a scheme to gain market share by inducing consumers to join Facebook through a pattern of deception regarding its data privacy protections and its commercial surveillance, the class action claims.

Despite Facebook’s claims about user privacy, it hid the extent to which it collected and shared user data in a bid to eliminate competition. The social media giant also chose to restrict emerging competitors from gaining access to valuable user data if they refused to sell their business to Facebook.

According to the lawsuit, Facebook went on to weaponize the data it obtained from consumers by “means of deception” to destroy competition through its strategy of “acquire, copy, or kill”, resulting in a monopoly on the social media market, decreasing consumer choice and reducing the value of people’s data...

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