Meta Fined $414 Million After Ad Practices Ruled Illegal Under EU Law

Meta’s struggles come as it is attempting to diversify its business from social media to the virtual reality world known as the metaverse. The company’s stock price has plummeted more than 60 percent in the past year, and it has laid off thousands of employees.

Wednesday’s announcement relates to two complaints filed against Meta in 2018. Meta said it will appeal the decision, setting up what could be a prolonged legal fight that will test the power of the G.D.P.R. and how aggressively regulators use the law to force companies to change their business practices.

“We strongly believe our approach respects G.D.P.R., and we’re therefore disappointed by these decisions,” Facebook said in a statement.

The result was hailed by privacy groups as a long-overdue response to companies gobbling up as much data as possible about people online in order to deliver personalized ads. But the more than four years it took to reach a decision was also seen by critics as a sign that enforcement of the G.D.P.R. is weak and slow.

“European enforcement has not yet delivered on the promise of the G.D.P.R.,” said Johnny Ryan, a privacy rights activists who is a senior fellow at the Irish Council for Civil Liberties. The judgment signals that “Big Tech may be in for a far bumpier ride.”

Within the European Union, there has been disagreement about how to enforce the G.D.P.R. Irish authorities said they initially ruled that Meta’s use of terms of service for permission was legally sufficient to comply with the law, but they were overruled by a board made of up representatives from all E.U. countries.

“There has been a lack of regulatory clarity on this issue, and the debate among regulators and policymakers around which legal basis is most appropriate in a given situation has been ongoing for some time,” Meta said in its statement.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/04/technology/meta-facebook-eu-gdpr.html