Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta has breached the EU’s new digital laws with an advertising model that charges users for ad-free versions of Facebook and Instagram, according to the European Commission.
Meta launched a “pay or consent” model last year in an effort to comply with the bloc’s data privacy rules, where users pay a monthly fee for an ad-free version of Facebook or Instagram that does not use their personal data for advertising purposes. Users who do not pay have, as part of the signing up process for the platforms, consented to their data being used to tailor personalised adverts that appear in their social media feeds.
The European Commission, the EU’s executive body, said the model does not comply with the Digital Markets Act, which is designed to rein in big tech companies. The commission issued preliminary findings from an investigation into “pay or consent” on Monday and found the model “forces users to consent” to their data being 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 “with adverts” 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 fails to provide them a less personalised but equivalent version of Meta’s social networks,” said the commission.
It said in order to comply with the DMA, Meta must launch “equivalent” versions of Facebook and Instagram that use less of people’s data.
A Meta spokesperson said the new model had been designed to comply the DMA and other regulatory demands.
“Subscriptions as an alternative to advertising are a well-established business model across many industries, and we designed subscription for no ads to address several overlapping regulatory obligations, including the DMA. We will continue to engage constructively with the commission,” said the spokesperson.
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The commission must finish its investigation by the end of March next year and Meta faces a fine of up to 10% of global turnover – equivalent to $13.5bn (£10.5bn) – if it is deemed to have breached the act. Last week the commission said Apple had breached the DMA by restricting competition on its app store.
