Italy court OKs Meta scraping class action

A Milan court has let a class action against Meta move forward over Facebook data scraping, opening a path for Italian users to pursue one case together. (channelnewsasia.com) The court accepted the case on Tuesday, April 14, 2026, after a consumer group sued Meta Platforms over personal data taken from Facebook Italy accounts, according to the court order reported by Reuters. (insurancejournal.com) The underlying incident ran from January 2018 to September 2019 and was disclosed in 2021, when a dataset tied to about 533 million Facebook users worldwide surfaced online. (finance.yahoo.com) Data scraping is automated collection: software pulls information from profiles and directories at high speed, even when a platform says the activity breaks its rules. Meta said in 2021 that the specific feature used to collect the Facebook data had been addressed in 2019. (about.fb.com) European regulators already penalized Meta over the same episode. Ireland’s Data Protection Commission said on November 28, 2022 that it fined Meta Platforms Ireland 265 million euros and ordered corrective measures after its Facebook data-scraping inquiry. (dataprotection.ie) The Milan case turns that regulatory history into a consumer damages test in Italy. It asks whether the loss of control over semi-public profile data can support compensation claims gathered into one proceeding. (insurancejournal.com) That question lands in a legal system Italy rebuilt in 2021. Law No. 31 of 2019 took effect on May 19, 2021, expanded class actions beyond the old consumer-code model, and kept an opt-in structure for people who want to join. (mimit.gov.it) Italy added another collective-redress tool in 2023 when it implemented the European Union directive on representative actions, giving qualified consumer bodies a separate route for cross-border and domestic claims under European Union consumer law. (dlapiper.com) Meta is contesting the case. A company spokesperson told Reuters, “We are confident this meritless action will ultimately be dismissed.” (uk.finance.yahoo.com) The next fight is no longer about whether the lawsuit can be filed. It is about whether Italian courts will award money for scraped Facebook data at class-action scale. (channelnewsasia.com)