On Monday 1 July, the European Commission announced that it had sent the US company Meta (parent company of Facebook and Instagram) the preliminary conclusions of its investigation, which was launched in March (see EUROPE 13378/8).
According to the institution, the ‘pay or consent’ advertising model - which obliges users who do not want to hand over their personal data to pay a monthly fee - does not comply with the Digital Markets Act (DMA).
In the context of the DMA, the designated ‘gatekeepers’ must offer their users the option of not consenting to the aggregation of their data across several platforms, without being prejudiced in terms of feedback.
The Commission points out that the suspected infringement is not linked to the monthly fee payable, but to the aggregation of personal data from several platforms and the absence of a “third contextual alternative” that would offer an option for “the same service, but with less targeted advertising”.
The European Consumers Organisation (BEUC) was quick to react, welcoming the Commission’s decision, which “comes on top of the complaints lodged in recent months by consumer organisations against the Meta model for breaches of consumer and data protection law”.
This is the second indictment of a digital giant under the DMA: last week, the Commission had already nailed Apple for the rules governing its AppStore (see EUROPE 13348/15). (Original version in French by Isalia Stieffatre)