Social media giant Meta has been hit with a massive €805m fine, equivalent to £670m or $887m, by Italian regulators for accessing Android users' photos and videos without obtaining their specific consent. The penalty stands as one of the largest financial sanctions ever imposed by an Italian authority on a major technology company, underscoring growing regulatory scrutiny over data privacy practices.
Italy's Data Protection Authority stated that Meta failed to properly inform approximately 20 million smartphone users that the Facebook app possessed access to their personal media files via a specific built-in feature. Consequently, regulators have given the company a strict deadline of 60 days to disable the feature by default and to seek explicit, separate consent from users before any such access can continue.
The controversy centers around a functionality designed to suggest photos and videos from a user's phone gallery as potential ideas for social media posts. Facebook traditionally requested access to user photo galleries through a single, app-wide authorization prompt. However, according to the Italian regulatory body, the preceding notice provided to users failed to make it sufficiently clear that this permission would simultaneously enable Facebook to generate automated content suggestions derived from their private galleries.
In determining the severity of the penalty, the regulator explicitly factored in the exceptionally high volume of individuals affected by the oversight. Officials noted that the unauthorized practice remained ongoing for users who had not updated their application as well as for those who had previously granted system permissions under ambiguous terms. Furthermore, the regulatory authority explicitly cited Meta's lack of cooperation throughout the inquiry as a contributing factor to the decision.
In a separate legal development on another continent, a US judge in New Mexico ordered the company to pay $25bn, amounting to £18.6bn, following findings that the firm spent years misleading the public regarding its handling of Facebook user data. These concurrent regulatory actions highlight an intensifying global crackdown on how major technology corporations manage and protect consumer information.
