It looks like Apple isn’t the only technology firm that the European Commission has its eye on — Meta has just received a letter damning the company’s ‘pay or consent model’, and the Commission has demanded a response by September 1 this year.
If Meta doesn’t reply? “CPC authorities can decide to take enforcement measures, including sanctions,” says the letter. The Commission evidently sees that there is a legal problem with Meta’s model, and if Zuckerberg’s company isn’t careful, it could become a cropper akin to Apple and the anti-competition lawsuit it faced.
What’s all this then?
According to the European Commission, “there are concerns that Meta's ‘pay or consent' model might breach EU consumer law.” It’s all down to an agreement that a user of Meta’s services has to make with the company, and how the decision doesn’t include enough information to inform them of what Meta is actually going to do with their data.
The Commission’s investigation “started in 2023, immediately after Meta had requested consumers overnight to either subscribe to use Facebook and Instagram against a fee or to consent to Meta's use of their personal data to be shown personalized ads, allowing Meta to make revenue out of it (‘pay or consent').” The EU is not happy that users were given enough information to make a clear and well-informed decision.
What happens next? Meta either replies to the commission with action, or the firm ends up in the European courts. Looking at what happened to Apple in its case against the EU, that could mean not just financial punishment, but a complete change to its business model. And given that it seems like Meta makes a great deal of money from personalized ads on its platforms, we could well see more scrutiny and greater control over how Meta can use customers' data and how it approaches its payment options.
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