Italy fines Meta $887m for reading Android users' photo galleries
Sum equals about five days of profit and the remedies for 20 million affected users are consent screens instead of payments, Meta will appeal after Amazon's Italian fine was cut on review
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Meta had access to Android users’ photos and videos through a Facebook app feature. Photograph: Dado Ruvić/Reuters
theguardian.com
Italy's data protection authority has fined Meta €805m ($887m) for accessing photographs, videos and related metadata belonging to Italian users through the Facebook app for Android, without obtaining their specific consent. The penalty, announced Saturday, is among the largest an Italian authority has imposed on a technology company.
The case concerns the gallery suggestions feature, available since 2023, which surfaces pictures from a user's phone gallery as ideas for posts while they browse. According to the regulator, Facebook requested gallery access through a single authorization valid for the entire app, preceded by a generic notice about enabling other features — leaving users unable to understand that they were also opening their photo libraries. Around 20 million Android users in Italy were affected. The authority has ordered Meta to seek consent through a separate, specific request and to signpost clearly what the feature is used for and how to disable it. In sizing the fine it weighed the number of people affected, the duration of the infringement — still ongoing, it said, both for those who have not updated the app and for those who already consented — and "Meta's lack of cooperation during the investigation."
Meta said it will appeal, calling the fine disproportionate. The scale is relative: the sum amounts to roughly 0.4 percent of turnover — $201bn last year, with net profit of $60.5bn — or about five days of profit. Amazon's Italian fine of more than €1.1bn, imposed in 2021 for breaching competition law, was reduced to €752m on appeal. In late October, New Mexico ordered Meta to pay $25bn, a record for the company, for misleading residents for more than a decade about the use of their data; Meta described that penalty as a "tax" on freedom of expression.
The remedies Italy has ordered are consent screens. Compensation for the 20 million users whose galleries were read is not among them.