EU orders Meta to pay €1.2 billion fine and stop transferring data, according to Irish Data Protection Commission.
Social media giant Meta has been fined a record-breaking €1.2 billion ($1.3 billion) by the Data Protection Commission of Ireland. They are also required to stop transferring data collected from European Facebook users to the United States. This ruling is a significant breach of European Union data protection rules.
Penalty on Meta For Privacy Violation:
The Irish regulator has imposed the penalty on Meta due to their failure to follow a 2020 decision by the European Union’s highest court. This decision stated that data transferred from Europe to the United States lacked sufficient protection against surveillance by American intelligence agencies.
Although the ruling focuses on Facebook, it does not affect other platforms under Meta, like Instagram and WhatsApp. Meta plans to challenge the decision and assures users that there will be no immediate interruption to Facebook services in the European Union.
Privacy activist Max Schrems, who started the legal action against Facebook, responded to the ruling by saying, “If U.S. surveillance laws are not changed, Meta will need to make significant changes to its systems.”
He suggested the idea of a “federated social network” where most of people’s personal data would be kept within the European Union.
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Meta reacted to the ruling:
Meta reacted to the ruling by arguing that it was singled out for data-sharing practices that many other companies also employ. Nick Clegg, Meta’s President of Global Affairs, and Jennifer Newstead, the Chief Legal Officer, expressed their worry about possible restrictions on transferring data between different countries, as reported by The New York Times.
The ruling coincides with the five-year anniversary of the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). The authorities imposed a €1.2 billion fine on Meta and mandated that the company address the data it had previously collected from users, which may involve deletion.
This large social media company has faced multiple regulatory actions related to the GDPR. In January, it was fined €390 million for requiring users to accept personalized ads to use Facebook. In November, it received another fine of €265 million for a data breach.
Important: This article is intended solely for informational purposes. It should not be considered or relied upon as legal, tax, investment, financial, or any other form of advice.
