Meta Platforms Inc. (NASDAQ:META) inches up in pre trading session on Thursday as the company’s top privacy regulator in the EU ruled on Wednesday that it must reevaluate the legal justification for how Facebook and Instagram use personal data to target advertising in the region. The social media giant was fined 390 million euros ($414 million) for the violations.
The judgements do not ban personalized advertising from appearing on Meta’s platforms, according to the company, which stated that it intends to challenge both the opinions’ substance and the penalties assessed.
According to a judgment seen by Reuters, the EU’s privacy watchdog issued the ban on personalized advertising in December and overturned a draft decision prepared by Ireland’s Data Privacy Commissioner (DPC), Meta’s senior EU privacy regulator.
In response to new EU privacy rules, Facebook and Instagram changed their terms of service in 2018, and Meta attempted to rely on the so-called “contract” legal basis for the majority of its processing activities.
The DPC said that while Meta had previously relied on users’ agreement to the use of their personal data for targeted advertising, Meta now believed that a contract was formed following acceptance of the revised 2018 conditions, making such advertising legal.
The DPC, the primary privacy authority for many of the biggest digital businesses in the world operating in the EU, gave Meta three months to bring its data processing processes into conformity.
Meta asserted that it firmly thinks its method complies with EU privacy regulations, which provide a variety of legal justifications for the use of data and do not require the use of permission.
In a statement, Meta stated that they wanted to reassure consumers and companies that they could continue to take advantage of targeted advertising on Meta’s platforms throughout the EU.
The penalties increased the Irish regulator’s total sanctions against Meta to 1.3 billion euros. There are currently 11 active queries about Meta services.
The EU’s privacy watchdog allegedly ordered the Irish regulator to launch a new probe into all of Facebook and Instagram’s data processing activities as part of its judgment, according to the DPC.
The DPC stated that it was improper for the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) to order a body to conduct such inquiries and that it intended to petition the EU Court of Justice to overturn the EDPB’s order since it may be considered an “overreach.”