Ireland's data privacy watchdog has fined Meta 17 million euros or $18.6 million for violating Europe's strict privacy law.
Meta Fined by DPC of Ireland
The regulator, the Data Protection Commission of Ireland, has been investigating how Meta complied with the requirements of the law, also called as General Data Protection Regulation, in how it handled personal data in 12 data breach notifications between June 2018 and December 2018.
The regulator said on Mar. 15 that it found that Meta did not have the right measures in place to show it could protect users' data in Europe, according to ABC News.
The company said in an email statement that the fine is about record keeping practices from 2018 that they have since updated, not a failure to protect people's information.
The company added that they take their obligations under the GDPR seriously, and will carefully consider the decision as their process continue to evolve.
Under GDPR, the Irish regulator leads cross-border data privacy cases for tech companies that have their headquarters in Dublin.
It has investigated Meta for several issues that involves data and privacy and fined the tech giant's WhatsApp communication service 225 million euros, or $267 million at the time, in September 2021, for another GDPR violation.
Facebook's Privacy Issues
Meta has the ambition to create the metaverse, which means more sensors in people's homes and collecting data. If a user gets into the metaverse, they are trusting Meta to keep their data private, according to Forbes.
At a time when Facebook and Meta are facing a lot of lawsuits due to privacy issues and data breaches, trust is not a word that can reel people back in. This is why the number of people moving to iPhones and using Apple's own privacy features are increasing.
Facebook's AI algorithm that leads people to extreme content has been under the public's spotlight and is at the center of several allegations that the social network puts profits before its users.
Meta and the metaverse have become the subject of a warning made by Frances Haugen, Facebook's whistleblower. In an interview with the Associated Press, Haugen said that the virtual reality world could give the social media site another monopoly online, as well as being addictive, and steal more personal information from its users.
Haugen said that Facebook's push for the metaverse is a screen behind which it can hide while its issues play out. This was eventually denied by Meta, which said it had been planning the announcement for years now, and that the metaverse will be built with privacy as its main priority.
Andrew Bosworth, the Vice President of Facebook Reality Labs and Nick Clegg, the Vice President of the Global Affairs claimed that the metaverse will be built by the company responsibly.
Bosworth and Clegg said that the metaverse won't be built overnight by a single company. They will collaborate with policymakers, experts and several industry partners to bring the idea to life.
Meta stated that it will work with human rights and civil rights communities from the start to make sure that technologies are built in a way that is inclusive and empowering.
Earlier this year, Google and Meta's Facebook was fined a total of $284 million over making cookie refusal difficult.
In November 2021, Meta's WhatsApp was fined in Europe for tweaking its privacy policy.
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Written by Sophie Webster
