Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta has violated new EU digital laws with an advertising model that charges users for ad-free versions of Facebook and Instagram, according to the European Commission.
Meta last year launched a “pay or consent” model in an effort to comply with the bloc’s data privacy rules, under which users pay a monthly fee for an ad-free version of Facebook or Instagram that does not use their personal data for advertising purposes. Non-paying users consent, as part of the registration process on the platforms, to their data being used to personalize ads that appear on their social media channels.
The European Commission, the EU’s executive body, said the model did not comply with the Digital Markets Act (DMA), designed to rein in big tech companies. The commission on Monday published preliminary results of an investigation into “pay or consent” and found that the model “forces users to consent” to having their data collected from multiple platforms. It also does not allow users to choose a service that uses less of their data but is broadly similar to the “ad-supported” versions of Facebook and Instagram, the commission said.
“In the Commission’s preliminary view, this binary choice forces users to consent to the combination of their personal data and does not provide them with a less personalized but equivalent version of Meta’s social networks,” it said.
He said that to comply with the DMA, Meta must launch “equivalent” versions of Facebook and Instagram that use less of people’s data.
A Meta spokesman said the new model had been designed to meet DMA and other regulatory demands.
“Subscriptions as an alternative to advertising are an established business model across many industries, and we have designed ad-free subscription to address several overlapping regulatory obligations, including the DMA. We will continue to engage constructively with the Commission,” they said.
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The commission is due to complete its investigation by the end of March next year and Meta faces a fine of up to 10% of global turnover. equivalent to $13.5 billion (£10.5 billion) – if he is considered to have infringed the act. The commission said last week that Apple had violated the DMA by restricting competition in its app store.