The EU is preparing a fine of 12 billion for a social network

The European Union opened the way for severe financial sanctions against Meta, ruling that the social network does not comply with European rules regarding the use of personal data for personalized advertising. Meta is obliged to request users' consent to combine data from its various services for the purpose of creating advertising profiles. To comply, the American group offered Facebook and Instagram users a paid subscription that allows them to avoid being targeted by advertising. On the other hand, if they want to keep a free service, they must agree to hand over their data. "Meta has forced millions of users across the EU to make a binary choice: pay or consent. According to our preliminary findings, this is a breach of the Digital Markets Regulation (DMA)," said Digital Affairs Commissioner Thierry Breton. The DMA, which came into full force at the beginning of March, "exists to give European users the power to decide about their data," he stressed. Meta, for its part, claims that its subscription model "is in accordance with the DMA". "We look forward to continuing a constructive dialogue with the European Commission to close this investigation," said a spokesperson for the group. However, the Commission believes that the Meta model does not comply with 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 various platforms. The EU executive pointed out in a statement that tech giants such as Meta have succeeded in "imposing conditions of service their vast user base that allows them to collect large amounts of personal data. This gave them potential advantages over their competitors". It is the second time a digital giant has been charged under the DMA since the opinion was issued, following the opening of an investigation on March 25. The European Commission accused Apple of violating European competition rules through its app store. Meta can now exercise its right of defense by obtaining access to the file and responding in writing to the preliminary findings. If confirmed, the Commission will adopt a final non-compliance decision by the end of March 2025. Meta could 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 Mark Zuckerberg's group failed to comply with EU rules. The DMA, which enables faster and stronger action against competition abuses by digital giants, was introduced to protect the emergence and growth of start-ups in Europe and to give consumers more choice. 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 booking platform Booking. An investigation into Alphabet (Google) was also opened for DMA infringement.