The encyclopedia · Legal & Compliance · Legal decision · 2023–2025
Meta fined €200M for making Europeans pay up or be tracked
Facebook and Instagram users in the EU had to consent to cross-app tracking or pay for ad-free — the Commission said that is no choice at all.
Meta Platforms · 2025-04-23
What happened
In November 2023 Meta gave its EU users of Facebook and Instagram a binary choice: consent to their personal data being combined across apps for personalised advertising, or pay a monthly subscription for ad-free versions. On 23 April 2025 the European Commission fined Meta €200 million over that model under the Digital Markets Act.
The DMA requires gatekeepers to offer users who refuse consent an equivalent service that relies on less personal data. The Commission found Meta's pay-or-consent design did not meet that standard. The fine covers March 2024, when the obligations became binding, to November 2024, when Meta introduced a new model using less personal data — a model still under assessment.
Meta was ordered to change course within 60 days. It accused the EU of attempting to handicap successful American businesses, and said the forced change amounted to a multi-billion-dollar tariff requiring it to offer an inferior service.
Why it happened
- An ad-funded platform that prices refusal high enough will harvest consent from almost everyone — the regulator treated the design of the choice, not the wording of it, as the problem.
- Framing take-it-or-leave tracking as user choice shifts responsibility onto the user; the DMA treats dependence on the gatekeeper itself as the harm.
- Compliance written to preserve the old revenue model reproduces the same data flow behind a paywall — the Commission fined the model, not the label.
The lesson
Consent built as pay-up-or-be-tracked is not consent — when a rule demands a genuine choice, the alternative must be equivalent, or the choice itself is the violation.
Sources
- Commission finds Apple and Meta in breach of the Digital Markets Act — European Commission
- EU hits Apple and Meta with €700m of fines — BBC News
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