The “Irish Cnil” has considered the conditions of use of Facebook and Instagram services, which resort to targeted advertising,
by Alexandre Piquard
This is an important setback for Meta: Facebook and Instagram’s parent company has failed in “its obligations in terms of transparency” and is based on an erroneous legal basis “for its processing of personal data for purposes “targeted advertising, the DPC, the Irish data protection authority, announced on Wednesday January 4. The latter, which supervises the company for Europe whose regional headquarters is installed in Dublin, therefore inflicted on the group founded by Mark Zuckerberg a fine of 390 million euros (210 million for Facebook and 180 million for Instagram). Another sanction, concerning his WhatsApp messaging, is expected next week.
Beyond the amount of fines -this amounts to 1 billion euros if we add two other recent decisions of the “Irish Cnil” -, this is the bottom of the case which matters. It affects targeted advertising, which adapts the announcements according to the profile and online user activity. It is the heart of the activity of the world leader in social networks.
“The penalty is a serious blow to the Meta economic model in Europe. Its platforms will have to clearly ask for the consent of their members to serve them
Personalized advertising, with an option proposing to respond yes or no, “welcomed the association for the defense of online freedoms which filed the complaints at the origin of these decisions.
Limit tracing
“This adds difficulty to an environment already complicated for digital advertising” for Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook and Meta, underlines in a note the financial analyst Dan Ives, of the investment bank Wedbush Securities. Indeed, Meta has already suffered a lot from the measures taken in 2021 by Apple to limit advertising tracing: on its iPhone, applications like Facebook or Instagram were forced to request the consent of users to follow their activity on other services. However, 70 % would refuse, which limited Meta’s ability to target its advertisements according to uses, therefore centers of interest, Internet users.
In February 2022, the company had estimated at $ 10 billion (9.42 billion euros) the shortfall for 2022. Since then, Meta says it has developed alternative targeting methods requiring less data, but This point contributed to darkening its economic situation: the company in July then published the first two declines of turnover in its history, then announced the dismissal of 11,000 people. According to Mr. Ives, the decision of the Irish CNIL is “a big blow in the stomach, with 5 % to 7 % of its threatened advertising revenues”.
You have 46.33% of this article to read. The continuation is reserved for subscribers.