BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Spanish legacy media companies in Spain scored a victory against social media giant Meta after a Madrid-based court ordered Thursday that it must pay news outlets nearly half a billion euros in damages.

According to a court statement, the mercantile court No. 15 of Madrid ruled that Mark Zuckerberg’s social media giant had exercised an unfair market advantage by extracting personal data of internet users in violation of European law and using it to create more effective advertising.

The parent company of Instagram and Facebook will have to pay 481 million ($554 million) in damages to 81 Spanish media outlets which brought the suit to court.

“The illicit treatment of this enormous quantity of personal data meant Meta had an advantage that Spanish online media coul

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