Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:META, ETR:FB2A, SWX:FB), the parent company of social media platforms Facebook and Instagram, said it “strongly disputes” the allegations of privacy infringements filed by eight European Union consumer groups this Thursday.
These complaints, filed in countries including the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, and Spain, accuse Meta of failing to adhere to GDPR's fair processing and data minimisation standards.
The European Consumer Organisation (BEUC) accused Meta’s ‘pay-or-consent’ business model of being a “smokescreen to obscure (the) real problem of illegal processing of data”.
Meta's ‘pay or consent’ model offers users a choice of either consenting to personalised advertising and data tracking, or paying a subscription fee for an ad-free experience.
“The complaints are extremely wide-ranging (and we would argue, inaccurate),” a spokesperson told Proactive.
“Overall, Meta strongly disputes these allegations – we take our regulatory obligations extremely seriously and are very confident that our approach complies with GDPR.”
Meta said it collects “the minimum amount of data required to support clearly stated purposes”.
“Since 2019, we’ve overhauled privacy at Meta. We’re held accountable for protecting people’s privacy by regulators, policymakers and experts. We work with them to ensure that what we build follows best practices and meets high standards for data protection.
“We collaborate closely with experts, regulators, academics, and leaders in the data protection community and incorporate their feedback throughout the product development process.”
Meta said its subscription model (what the BEUC labelled ‘pay or consent’) conforms to the direction given by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) last July.
However, BEUC believes Meta is continuing to process users’ data “without a legal basis, as the consent the company asks for is not valid”.
"Surveillance-based business models pose all kinds of problems under the GDPR and it's time for data protection authorities to stop Meta's unfair data processing and its infringing of people’s fundamental rights," Ursula Pachl, deputy director general of the European Consumer Organisation, said in a statement.
Meta was previously accused of allowing Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm, to access the data of millions of Facebook users without their consent in order to influence voter opinion during elections around the world.