Meta wins lawsuit over Apple’s privacy changes

The case was dismissed with prejudice, preventing it from being refiled.
Joelle Pineau, Meta's VP of AI research, will leave the company at the end of May, having led key projects like PyTorch and Llama AI since joining in 2017.

Meta Platforms has secured a legal victory after a US court dismissed a lawsuit accusing the tech giant of misleading shareholders about the impact of Apple’s privacy changes on its advertising business. The suit, brought by Israeli insurers and pension funds, claimed Meta concealed how Apple’s iOS privacy updates would diminish the effectiveness of ads on Facebook and Instagram, harming the company’s ad revenue.

The plaintiffs argued that Meta’s stock value dropped 53% within a year, wiping out over $500 billion in market value as the truth about Apple’s changes came to light. However, US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ruled that Meta’s eventual admission of a $10 billion financial hit in 2022 due to Apple’s policy didn’t prove that earlier disclosures were misleading or fraudulent.

In addition to the privacy claims, the lawsuit also alleged Meta had concealed former COO Sheryl Sandberg’s use of company resources for personal projects, including her wedding and book. The judge rejected these accusations, noting they were based on unverified media reports. Claims that Meta’s transition to Reels, a short-form video format inspired by TikTok, negatively impacted the company’s financial performance were also dismissed for lack of evidence.

Judge Rogers’ ruling effectively closes the case, dismissing it with prejudice, meaning it cannot be refiled. Meta and its top executives, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg and CFO Susan Li, have denied the allegations throughout the legal battle. Meta and the plaintiffs’ lawyers have not commented on the court’s decision.