Meta's Revised Paid Service May Breach EU Privacy Laws

The European Consumer Organisation (BEUC) is concerned that Meta’s latest pay-or-consent policy may be infringing consumer and data protection law as well as the Digital Markets Act. At the end of 2024, Meta rolled out a second version of its pay-or-consent policy, after last year’s version caused an uproar from consumers and other civil society groups and triggered the opening of investigations [4] by European authorities.

In November 2023, the tech giant’s original pay-or-consent mechanism required Facebook and Instagram users again to either consent to the processing of their data for advertising purposes by the company or pay a fee in order not to be shown advertisements based on their data. The new version of Meta’s pay-or-consent policy fails to address the fundamental problems consumer groups identified in the tech giant’s pay-or-consent initial approach, BEUC said.

“European consumers should not be fooled by the cosmetic changes Meta applies to its one-year-old pay-or-consent policy. In our view, the tech giant fails to address the fundamental issue that Facebook and Instagram users are not being presented with a fair choice and is making a weak bid to argue it is complying with EU law while still pushing users towards its behavioral ads system. It is important for consumer and data protection authorities and the European Commission to quickly investigate Meta’s latest policy and, if needed, take immediate and effective measures to protect consumers,” said Agustín Reyna, Director General of BEUC.

BEUC and its members consider Meta’s newest pay-or-consent policy to be a breach of EU law on numerous counts. Those include using misleading practices unclear terms and confusing interface design to steer users towards Meta’s preferred option and not giving users the possibility to consent fully freely to their data being processed, while the tech giant does not minimize the data it collects from users. BEUC stated Meta degrades the service to users who do not consent to the use of their personal data.