Win for now: British court dismisses $3.7 billion class action against Meta

Beijing, February 21 (Xinhua)-- Meta, the parent company of Facebook, temporarily won a class action lawsuit worth up to 3 billion pounds (CTOnews.com Note: about 24.81 billion yuan) on Monday, local time, accusing the social media giant of abusing its dominant position to cash in users' personal data.

However, a London court gave lawyers for the proposed plaintiffs up to six months to "try again" to determine any losses claimed by users.

Liza Lovdahl Gormsen, the legal scholar who filed the lawsuit, said the value of the personal data that Facebook users had to provide to use the platform had not been properly compensated.

Her team of lawyers last month asked the Competition Court of Appeal (Competition Appeal Tribunal) to certify the case under the British class action system, which is roughly equivalent to the US class action system.

But on Monday the court ruled that Mr Lofdahl's method of determining the losses suffered by Facebook users needed to be "thoroughly reassessed" before the case could proceed.

However, Judge Marcus Smith (Marcus Smith) gave Lofdahl Gomson's lawyer six months to "submit more evidence and develop a new and better blueprint for an effective trial."

A spokesman for Meta said the company welcomed the decision and referred to a previous statement that the lawsuit was "completely without legal basis". Mr Lovdahl declined to comment.