Italy’s data-protection watchdog Garante, part of the Italian regime’s regulatory apparatus, has fined Meta €805 million ($887 million) after concluding that the Facebook app on Android devices accessed photos, videos and associated metadata stored on Italian users’ smartphones without specific consent and without informing them. The authority said on Saturday that the case centres on the “Get suggestions from gallery when browsing Facebook” feature, which proposes images and videos from a phone’s gallery for posting while a user browses the platform. The regulator claims the feature breached Italian law implementing the European regime’s ePrivacy directive, and it described the consent process as too generic and the option as enabled by default.
Key Takeaways: Garante imposed the largest fine in its history, €805 million, roughly 0.47% of Meta’s global turnover. The regulator claims about 20 million Italian Android users may have been affected by a gallery-suggestion feature that was enabled by default and accompanied by unclear consent. Meta has not yet publicly commented and retains the right to appeal.
The decision is part of a broader push by European regulators to test how large platforms obtain consent for data processing, especially on mobile devices where permissions can be opaque. Garante said the app’s consent notification did not allow users to understand the specific permissions they were granting and that the suggestions option was switched on by default. It also cited a lack of cooperation by Meta and said an earlier violation, which led to a 2019 fine, contributed to the latest penalty. The regulator ordered Meta to correct the unclear consent notice and stop setting the feature by default.
Meta has not yet publicly responded to the fine, and any appeal would likely focus on whether the regulator’s reading of consent requirements is proportionate and technically justified. The proceedings did not address the possible use of content to train artificial intelligence, an issue Meta denies. The fine is the largest ever imposed by Garante, according to the authority, and it signals that privacy enforcement in the European regime can carry material costs even when the percentage of global turnover is modest. For Meta, the case adds to a growing list of regulatory and legal challenges in Western markets.
The next step will be Meta’s decision on whether to appeal and whether it changes the gallery-suggestion feature for Italian users. Garante’s order requires the company to fix the consent notification and disable default activation, but the timetable for compliance and the scope of any technical changes remain unclear. The case may also encourage other European privacy regulators to scrutinise similar default settings, while platforms argue that fragmented enforcement raises compliance costs and creates uncertainty for users and businesses.
Source: www.aljazeera.com