Irish Watchdog Penalizes Meta By €390M For User Privacy Violation

Ireland Data Protection Commission (DPC) disclosed the conclusion of two inquiries into the data processing operations of Meta Platforms Inc META regarding the delivery of its Facebook and Instagram services.
The DPC penalized Meta Ireland €210 million for breaches of the GDPR relating to its Facebook service and €180 million for violations of its Instagram service.
The DPC urged Meta Ireland to bring its data processing operations into compliance within three months.
The inquiries concerned two complaints about the Facebook and Instagram services, each raising the same fundamental issues on May 25 2018, the date the GDPR came into operation.
Meta has long allowed users to opt-out of personalizing ads based on data it gleans from users’ activity on other websites and apps, the Wall Street Journal reports.
But it doesn’t give users any such option for opting out of ads based on data about activity on its platforms, like what posts a user comments on or videos an Instagram user watches.
Analysts say that in-house data is one of Meta’s leading tools for building customized audiences for the personalized ads it sells as part of its core advertising business.
Meta raked $83 billion in advertising revenue for the nine months that ended September 30, nearly a quarter of which came from Europe.
If a significant number of people opt out of ads powered with that behavioral data, prices for Meta’s advertising could fall by 10% - 20% in a worst-case scenario, wiping 12% - 25% from the company’s valuation, Morningstar analyst Ali Mogharabi wrote.
Meta in 2021 took a revenue hit when Apple Inc AAPL introduced iPhone user tracking norms.
Meta held $41.78 billion in cash and equivalents as of September 30, 2022.
Price Action: META shares traded lower by 0.27% at $127.02 in the premarket on the last check Thursday.

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