The EU on Monday paved the way for heavy financial sanctions against Meta, saying the social media giant was failing to comply with European rules on the use of personal data for targeted advertising.
Meta is required to ask for users’ consent in order to combine data from its various services for advertising profiling purposes.
To comply, the American group has offered Facebook and Instagram users a paid subscription that allows them to avoid being targeted by advertising. On the other hand, if they wish to keep a free service, they must agree to provide their data.
“Meta forced millions of users across the EU to make a binary choice: pay or consent. According to our preliminary findings, this is a violation” of the Digital Markets Regulation (DMA), said digital commissioner Thierry Breton, on X.
The DMA, which came into full force at the beginning of March, “is there to give European users back decision-making power over their data”, he stressed.
Meta, for its part, claims that its subscription model “is DMA compliant”. “We look forward to continuing a constructive dialogue with the European Commission in order to close this investigation,” said a spokesperson for the group.
– Possible fine of 12 billion euros –
The Commission, however, considers that Meta’s model does not comply with the EU regulation, in particular because it “does not allow users to exercise their right to freely consent to the combination of their personal data” between its different platforms.
The European executive stressed in a statement that tech giants like Meta have been able to “impose conditions of service on their vast user base that allow them to collect a significant amount of personal data. This has given them potential advantages over their competitors.”
This opinion, formulated following the opening of an investigation on March 25, is the second indictment of a digital giant in the context of the DMA.
The European Commission had last week pinned Apple, whose App Store application store allegedly violated European competition rules.
Meta can now exercise its rights of defense by having access to the file and respond in writing to the preliminary conclusions.
If these were confirmed, the Commission would adopt a final decision of non-compliance by the end of March 2025.
Meta could then face a fine of up to 10% of its global turnover which reached around 125 billion euros last year: a sanction that could exceed 12 billion euros if Mark’s group Zuckerberg did not comply with EU rules.
The DMA, which allows us to act faster and stronger against competitive abuses by digital giants, was introduced to protect the emergence and growth of start-ups in Europe and offer more choice to consumers.
In addition to Apple, the new regulation applies to four other American giants – Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft – but also to the social network TikTok, owned by the Chinese group ByteDance, as well as to the Dutch hotel reservation platform Booking.
An investigation has also been opened against Alphabet (Google) for violation of the DMA.
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