EC Tentatively Finds Meta's Pay or Consent Model Breaches DMA

Meta's "pay or consent" advertising model violates the Digital Markets Act (DMA), the European Commission said Monday in preliminary findings. The commission found that the binary choice forces Facebook and Instagram users to consent to having their personal data combined across Meta's social media and advertising services without giving them a less personalized but equivalent version of its social network. Meta introduced its pay or consent approach in November to comply with the DMA but the EC found that the model breaches the law's Article 5 (2). The DMA doesn't say that personal data accumulation is illegal but that consumers should have a real choice about what data is accumulated across gatekeepers' services, EC officials said. The law doesn't require that Meta offer an ad-free service, but there must be a middle ground between consenting to the combination of personal data accumulation and combination across services or paying a subscription for ad-free services, it said. Meta was designated as a gatekeeper in September. A company is a gatekeeper when it derives a specified annual revenue in the European Economic Area and offers a platform in at least three EU countries; offers a core platform for more than 45 million monthly active end users located in the EU, and more than 10,000 yearly active business users established in the EU; and if it met the second criterion for the past three years (see 2309060002). Asked whether other companies that use the pay or consent model should consider the preliminary findings a warning, officials stressed the DMA covers gatekeepers only and the commission's findings don't set out a general principle on pay or consent for those enterprises that aren't gatekeepers. "Subscription for no ads follows the direction of the highest court in Europe and complies with the DMA," a Meta spokesperson emailed, adding the company will continue working with the EC to resolve the investigation. The enforcement action "comes on top of the complaints against Meta's model for breaches of consumer law and data protection law which consumer organizations have raised" recently, the European Consumer Organisation said: "We now urge Meta to comply with laws meant to protect consumers."