Meta $410M fine – ‘strikes at the heart’ of Facebook model / legal comment

The Irish Data Commission has today fined Meta $410M for privacy violations.

Jonathan Compton is a partner at city law firm DMH Stallard and specialist in data protection regulations.

Jonathan said:

“If the tech giants want to do business in the EU then they must take note that the commission and the courts take the rights and safeguards provided to EU citizens by GDPR very seriously.

“This case serves notice that big tech cannot hide behind ‘contractual necessity’ to play fast and loose with personal data of EU citizens.

“The deeper problem for Facebook, which relies on personalisation of adverts for users for about 80% of its revenue, is that this case strikes at the heart of that model, effectively denying tech firms the ability to use personal data to tailor the ad output to individual users, if this means harvesting their user data to do the tailoring.”