Meta's New Year Kicks Off With Over $410 Million in Fresh EU Privacy Fines

Meta is kicking off the New Year with more privacy fines and corrective orders hitting its business in Europe. The latest swathe of enforcement relates to EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) complaints over the legal basis it claims to run behavioral ads. From a report: The Facebook owner's lead data protection watchdog in the region, the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC), announced today that it's adopted final decisions on two of these long-running enquiries -- against Meta owned social networking site, Facebook, and social photo sharing service, Instagram. The DPC's press release today announces financial penalties of ~$223 million for Facebook and ~$191 million for Instagram -- and confirms the European Data Protection Board (EDPB)'s binding decision last month on these complaints that contractual necessity is not an appropriate basis for processing personal data for behavioral ads.

These new sanctions add to a pile of privacy fines for Meta in Europe last year -- including a $281 million penalty for a Facebook data-scraping breach; $429 million for an Instagram violation of children's privacy; $18 million for several historical Facebook data breaches; and a $63.6 million penalty over Facebook cookie consent violations -- making for a total of $792 million in (publicly disclosed) EU data protection and privacy fines handed down to the adtech giant in 2022. But now, in the first few days of 2023, Meta has landed financial penalties worth more than half last year's regional total -- and more sanctions could be coming shortly.

Who?

[VicVegas]

Oh, you mean Facebook. Funny how so many media outlets jumped on the Meta bandwagon, but Google is still Google, despite Alphabet.

Re:Who?

[nickovs]

The DPC's press release today announces financial penalties of ~$223 million for Facebook and ~$191 million for Instagram

The fines are not just for Facebook, but for two of the companies under Meta's ownership. Alphabet's non-Google businesses are generally in fields not related to search, so it's much less common for news about Google to really be about Alphabet.

Re:

[rogoshen1]

first you rename your company to mitigate a PR disaster (cambridge analytical)
then your new flagship effort is such a disaster that the new name is tarnished forever (metaverse)

You hate to see it.

Re: Who?

[fbobraga]

It's really curious (maybe the PR work was more "focused")

Re:

[Opportunist]

I like that they finally called a spade a spade and the spreading cancer Metastasis.

Re:

[thegarbz]

Oh, you mean Facebook. Funny how so many media outlets jumped on the Meta bandwagon, but Google is still Google, despite Alphabet.

Google is still Google because Google calls itself Google and Alphabet is just a parent company. When we run stories on Google we call them by their name. When we run stories on Waymo we rightfully point it is a subsidiary of Alphabet e.g. https://www.theverge.com/2022/... [theverge.com]

Facebook on the other hand only has a single web service called Facebook and its parent company is Meta. This fine here isn't targetted at Facebook, but the actions from the parent company which includes their Facebook and Instagram subsid

LOL

[muh_freeze_peach]

Just ban it. Oh but if you did that you couldn't line your buddys' pockets with stolen cash in the form of "fees".

Re:

[thegarbz]

Just ban it.

On what grounds? I mean I get it, I like to shit on Facebook as much as the next guy, but I don't want any government agency to *just* do anything that is even slightly beyond the legal letter of the law, regardless of how much I hate the company.

Re:

[muh_freeze_peach]

On the grounds that they are constantly having to fine them for breaking laws. How many chances should be given?

Cost of doing business

[poobah75]

The fines are a lot of money, but at what point will they stop being a "cost of doing business" to them? Didn't Meta have $171 BILLION in gross revenue last year? $39 billion in net income? These fines are significant, but don't seem to be steering them in the right direction quickly enough.

Re:

[timeOday]

Not sure I agree unless the companies are doing the same thing after being fined for it. The issue and the pertinent laws are complicated and highly subjective so it will take years to play out in the courts and in practice. "Just stop doing bad stuff, duh!" doesn't actually mean much once you start to think about it.

Re:

[thegarbz]

These fines are significant, but don't seem to be steering them in the right direction quickly enough.

Repeat fines generally get more severe. The point of the first fine is never to be incredibly damaging, it's always to be a warning that behaviour will not be tollerated.

The issue here though is Meta is a mega corporation. These behemoths move like molasses on a cold winters day. Changing business practices is insanely difficult in such large companies, even more difficult when legal is watching over your shoulder.

Re:

[pauljlucas]

Changing business practices is insanely difficult in such large companies, even more difficult when legal is watching over your shoulder.

And yet for such companies that maintain 24/7/365 online operations, major issues are fixed in usually hours.

Re:

[gweihir]

There is a step after the fnes in the GDPR: They can issue a prohibition on on storing and processing personal data for repeat offenders. AFAIK it has happened once so far. For any part of Meta, that would likely be a death-sentence.

Too Many Paid-Off Politicians In US. for that.

[BrendaEM]

Nope, telcoms and big business is above the law here.

Re:

[NoWayNoShapeNoForm]

Nope, telcoms and big business is above the law here.

Naah. Some EU legislators have empty pockets that need refilling after excessive spending over the holidays on ski vacations & mistresses.

Re:

[gweihir]

You do not that anti-corruption in the EU just had a pretty spectacular success?

Re:

[NoWayNoShapeNoForm]

Heard about that.

So are you suggesting that more arrests will occur in the future...once this 410+ million gets "distributed" to needy EU officials?

Re:

[gweihir]

Are you really this stupid?

Re:

[NoWayNoShapeNoForm]

I think we have seen "the tip of the iceberg" in EU corruption arrests.