According to a Madrid court, Facebook owner Meta Platforms will go on trial in Spain in October 2025 about a 551 million euro ($582 million) complaint filed by over 80 media businesses alleging unfair competition in advertising.

Last year, 87 Spanish media companies were represented by the AMI media association, which filed a complaint accusing Meta of breaking EU data protection regulations from 2018 to 2023.

According to the reports, Meta unfairly benefits from the "massive" and "systematic" exploitation of its Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp users' personal information to create and provide tailored advertisements, which they claim amounts to unfair competition.

Among the complainants are listed newspaper proprietors Vocento, which owns ABC Newspaper, and Prisa, which owns El Pais Newspaper.

On separate grounds, the Spanish TV and radio broadcasters' groups UTECA and AERC announced last month that they had sued Meta for 160 million euros.

In an attempt to protect their revenue, legacy media have filed lawsuits in Spain against tech giants, alleging that these companies ought to pay reasonable rates for the use and distribution of their content.

In nations like Canada and Australia, where Meta has prohibited users from reposting news stories, some of these initiatives have failed.

In order to increase traffic, Meta has been reducing the amount of news and political content it promotes in its other markets. According to Meta, news links now make up a very small portion of users' feeds.