Meta will be forced to pay a record €1.2 billion fine over claims it abused its users’ data.
The Irish Data Protection Commission said that Meta had broken the EU’s data protection rules by moving data between Europe and the US.
It had failed to protect European users from having their data used under US law when it did so, regulators said.
It will now be fined €1.2 billion, as well as being required to delete the data or move it back into Europe.
That fine is easily a record under the EU’s General Data Protection Regulations, or GDPR. The previous record was held by Amazon – which was fine €746 million by regulators in Luxembourg – though the four biggest fines after that have been paid by Meta as part of data issues at Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
Meta called the fine “unjustified and unnecessary”, and said that it would appeal the ruling.