• by Wendy Davis , Yesterday

Meta Platforms users on Friday pressed a federal appellate court to revive a lawsuit alleging that Facebook monopolized a market for “personal social network services," and that this alleged monopoly enabled it to obtain users' personal data without compensation.

U.S District Court Judge James Donato in the Northern District of California dismissed the users' lawsuit year, ruling that they had not proven they were harmed by Meta.

The plaintiffs are now arguing to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that they should have been able to present their case to a jury.

The dispute dates to 2020, when Vermont resident Maximilian Klein and Illinois resident Sarah Grabert sued the tech company over alleged antitrust violations.

The pair -- later joined by Minnesota resident Rachel Banks Kupcho -- claimed in a class-action complaint that Facebook grew in popularity after allegedly deceiving consumers about its privacy policy, then “weaponized” consumer data in order to acquire potential rivals like social media service Instagram (acquired for $1 billion in 2012) and messaging service WhatsApp (bought for $19 billion in 2014).

The users argued that if Meta had not obtained a monopoly, it would have had to pay users $5 per month for their personal data. That dollar figure came from economist Nichola Economides, who the plaintiffs wanted to present as an expert witness.

Donato ruled that Econonides's opinion wasn't supported by the record, and dismissed the lawsuit on that basis. He wrote that without Economides' testimony, the plaintiffs couldn't prove that they were injured by Meta's alleged monopolization.

The plaintiffs appealed to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing in legal papers filed in February that "reasonable jurors" could have agreed with Economides.

Meta countered in an April filing that the trial judge correctly rejected Economides' opinion.

"Economides had no factual basis for opining that Meta would pay everyone rather than competing by improving Facebook; nor did he justify his claim that Meta would pay all users -- even those who barely use the service and never click on ads -- the same $5 per month," Meta argued.

The company added that "real-world evidence" contradicts Economides' opinion.

For instance, Meta argued, it "invariably" responded to competitors by making its own services "more engaging," rather than by paying consumers.

"After Snapchat began capturing attention with Stories (images or short video posts that typically disappear), Meta did not respond by offering users $5 per month to keep using Facebook. It instead created its own Stories feature," the company argued.

"When TikTok achieved explosive growth with short-form videos and sophisticated algorithmic ranking systems that attracted usage away from Facebook, Meta responded by creating its own AI-driven short-form video offering called Reels," Meta added.

Counsel for the plaintiffs responded in their Friday filing that questions about the validity of Economides' opinion should have been resolved by a jury, as opposed to a judge.

Donato "erred by excluding Economides based on the court’s disagreement with Economides’ factual conclusions," the lawyers reiterate in their new papers.

The 9th Circuit hasn't yet set a date for oral arguments.

The Federal Trade Commission separately brought an unsuccessful suit against Meta over its acquisitions of Instagram and Whatsapp. U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg in Washington, D.C. threw out the case last year, ruling that the agency failed to prove Meta monopolized a market for "personal social networking services."

Instead, Boasberg ruled, Meta competes with YouTube and TikTok for social media users.

The commission is currently appealing that ruling to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.