Meta and Apple have earned the dubious honor of being the first companies fined for non-compliance with the EU’s Digital Markets Act, which experts say could inflame tensions between US President Donald Trump and the European bloc.
Apple was penalised to the tune of €500 million ($570 million) for violating anti-steering rules and Meta by €200 million ($228 million) for its “consent or pay” ad model, the EU said in a press release.
The fines are a pittance for both firms, whose most recent quarterly earnings statements from January saw Apple report $36.33 billion in net income, and Meta $20.83 billion.
Apple’s penalty related to anti-steering violations – for which it’s already paid a €1.8 billion penalty to the EU – saw it found guilty of not allowing app developers to direct users outside Apple’s own in-app payment system for cheaper alternatives. The European Commission also ordered Apple to “remove the technical and commercial restrictions on steering” while simultaneously closing an investigation into Apple’s user choice obligations, finding that “early and proactive” moves by Cupertino to address compliance shortcomings resolved the issue.
Meta, on the other hand, was fined for the pay-or-consent model whereby it offered a paid, ad-free version of its services as the only alternative to allowing the company to harvest user data. The strategy earned it considerable ire in Europe for exactly the reason the EU began investigating it last year: That it still ingested data even if users paid and that it wasn’t clear about how personal data was being collected or used.
“The Commission found that this model is not compliant with the DMA,” the EC said, because it gave users no choice to opt into a service that used less of their data, nor did it allow users to freely consent to having their data combined.
That fine only applies to the period between March and November 2024 when the consent-or-pay model was active, however. The EU said that a new advertising model introduced in November of last year resolved many of its concerns, which European Privacy advocate Max Schrems says will likely still be an issue.
“Meta has moved to a system with a ‘pay,’ a ‘consent’ and a ‘less ads’ option,” Schrems explained in a statement emailed to The Register. Schrems said the “less ads” option is nothing but a distraction.
“It has massive usability limitations – nothing any user seriously wants,” Schrems said. “Meta has simply created a ‘fake choice’, pretending that it would overcome the illegal ‘pay or okay’ approach.”
Alongside the fines, the EU also said that it was removing Facebook Marketplace’s designation as a DMA gatekeeper, as it had too few commercial users to qualify as “an important gateway for business users to reach end users.”
[… followed by stuff about how Americans don’t like the fines in usual snowflakey Trump style crying tantrums]
Source: EC fines Meta, Apple €700M for DMA compliance failures • The Register
Robin Edgar
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