Chicago lawyers pressing class action suit against Facebook over use of personal data

As Silicon Valley’s tech giants come under increasing antitrust scrutiny, Chicago attorneys are pursuing compensation for hundreds of millions of Facebook users, claiming the social media company used their personal data without their knowledge to thwart competition. A complaint naming two Facebook customers and seeking class-action status was filed Dec. 3 in U.S. District Court in Facebook’s home state of California. It could be a huge class: In July Facebook had nearly 2.5 billion active daily users when counting all its product offerings, including Instagram, according to the lawsuit. It said Facebook has acquired 63 firms since 2004 as part of a strategy the suit termed “copy, acquire or kill.” Integral to that strategy was surreptitiously using data from Facebook customers and their “friends” to surveil emerging social media firms and “cheat its way to market dominance,” according to the suit. “Facebook used the data that it obtained from users to track the websites and apps visited by its users—often without full disclosure—in order to identify which upstart competitors were gaining traction so that it could target them for acquisition or destruction,” it alleges.  » Read More