THE MORNING
July 1, 2024 at 12:03
“Meta forced millions of users across theUE to make a binary choice: pay or consent. According to our preliminary findings, this is a violation of the Digital Markets Regulation (DMA), Digital Commissioner said Thierry Bretonon
Meta asserts for his part that his subscription model “complies with the DMA”. “We look forward to continuing a constructive dialogue with the European Commission in order to close this investigation,” said a spokesperson for the group. 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 press release, that the tech giants, like Meta, were able to “impose terms of service on their large user base that allowed them to collect a significant amount of personal data. This gave 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 within the framework of the DMA.
The European Commission had pinned last week Appleincluding the app store App Store would violate European competition rules. Meta can now exercise its rights of defence by having access to the file and respond in writing to the preliminary conclusions. If these are confirmed, the Commission would adopt a final decision of non-compliance by the end of March 2025.
Meta could then be fined up to 10% of its global turnover, which reached around 125 billion euros last year: a penalty that could exceed 12 billion euros if the group Mark Zuckerberg did not comply with EU rules.
