Meta Faces a Big EU Fine, But Avoids the Body Blow
Privacy regulators considered forcing Meta to delete a decade’s worth of European data. That probably won’t happen.
Meta’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California.
Photographer: David Paul Morris/BloombergEurope has won a reputation for being the world’s leading watchdog on data protection, enacting robust privacy laws earlier than anywhere else and going after Big Tech. The reality is more mundane, and often looks like an endless game of ping pong. Companies appeal, cases get tangled up in court, and privacy practices occasionally improve.
Expect much of the same in about a week’s time. Meta Platforms Inc. is expected to be hit with another data-protection order on May 22, according to EU officials, over how it transfers European data to the US. It will be painful, but not excruciatingly so. There will be a fine, likely in the hundreds of of millions of dollars based on previous sanctions, and Meta will be told that it can no longer send European user data to be processed on US servers.