On a Saturday, Italy's data protection authority placed a fine of roughly $880 million on Meta, the parent of Facebook, for reaching into the photographs and videos of Italian users through its Android app without the specific consent the law demands. It is a reminder that in the old bargain between people and the platforms that hold their lives, permission must be explicit to mean anything. The fine joins a growing pile of reckonings for the company on both sides of the Atlantic, and its final weight will depend on what Meta answers and whether the decision survives the appeals that often res
Italy Fines Meta $880 Million for Accessing Users' Photos Without Specific Consent
The word "specific" carries the weight of the finding.
On a Saturday, Italy's data protection authority placed a fine of roughly $880 million on Meta, the parent of Facebook, for reaching into the photographs and videos of Italian users through its Android app without the specific consent the law demands. It is a reminder that in the old bargain between people and the platforms that hold their lives, permission must be explicit to mean anything. The fine joins a growing pile of reckonings for the company on both sides of the Atlantic, and its final weight will depend on what Meta answers and whether the decision survives the appeals that often reshape such sums.
On Saturday, Italy's data protection authority announced a fine of about $880 million against Meta, the parent company of Facebook. The regulator's core finding turns on one word: specific. Meta, it said, accessed photographs, videos and related metadata of Italian users through the Facebook app on Android, without obtaining the specific consent the law requires and without properly informing the people affected.
The penalty ranks among the largest an Italian authority has imposed on a technology giant. A useful comparison is Amazon, fined more than 1.1 billion euros in 2021 for breaching competition law, a figure later reduced on appeal to 752 million euros. That history makes clear that the number announced is not necessarily the number that stands.
Meta had not responded to a request for comment by Saturday afternoon, so its position on consent and access remains unstated. The fine also comes after a September judgment in New Mexico ordering the company to pay $25 billion for misleading people about its privacy policies, which Meta said it disagreed with. What remains open is the final amount, whether Meta appeals, and whether it changes how its Android app asks for access to people's photos.
On Saturday, Italy's data protection authority announced that it had fined Meta, the parent company of Facebook, about $880 million. The regulator's finding was specific: the company reached into Italian users' photos without asking them in a way the law requires.
According to the authority's statement, the access happened through the Facebook application on Android devices. Through that app, Meta reached photographs, videos and related metadata belonging to users in Italy. The regulator said this was done without obtaining specific consent and without properly informing the people affected.
The word "specific" carries the weight of the finding. The authority's position is not simply that users were unaware, but that the permission Meta obtained did not cover this kind of access, and that the notice given to users was inadequate.
The size of the penalty places it in rare company. The fine is among the largest an Italian authority has ever imposed on a technology giant. The most prominent precedent came in 2021, when Amazon was fined more than 1.1 billion euros, about $1.2 billion, for breaching competition law. That figure did not hold: on appeal it was reduced to 752 million euros, roughly $829 million.
That history matters here because Meta may also appeal. The company had not responded to a request for comment by Saturday afternoon, so its account of the access, and whether it disputes the regulator's reading of consent, has not yet been stated publicly in this reporting.
The Italian fine arrives amid other privacy costs for Meta. In September, a judge in New Mexico ordered the company to pay $25 billion to the state after a jury found it had misled people about its data privacy policies. Meta said it disagreed with the jury's verdict. Taken together, the penalties show regulators and courts on both sides of the Atlantic pressing the company on how it handles personal data.
What remains open is the figure itself and what follows from it. An appeal could change the amount, as it did for Amazon. Whether Meta alters how its Android app requests access to photos and videos has not been reported. The next signals will be Meta's response and whether it files an appeal.
Bemerkenswerte Zitate
Meta accessed users' photos, videos and metadata without obtaining specific consent and without properly informing them.— Italy's data protection authority, paraphrased
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