{"id":7548,"date":"2025-04-23T11:28:26","date_gmt":"2025-04-23T11:28:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/?p=7548"},"modified":"2025-04-23T11:28:28","modified_gmt":"2025-04-23T11:28:28","slug":"the-european-union-fines-apple-500m-euros-and-meta-200m-in-separate-digital-cases","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/?p=7548","title":{"rendered":"The European Union fines Apple 500M euros and Meta 200M in separate digital cases"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

LONDON — <\/span>European Union watchdogs fined Apple and Meta hundreds of millions of euros Wednesday as they stepped up enforcement of the 27-nation bloc\u2019s digital competition rules<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The European Commission imposed a 500 million euro ($571 million) fine on Apple for preventing app makers from pointing users to cheaper options outside its App Store. <\/p>\n

The commission, which is the EU\u2019s executive arm, also fined Meta Platforms 200 million euros because it forced Facebook and Instagram users to choose between seeing ads or paying to avoid them.<\/p>\n

The punishments were smaller than the blockbuster<\/a> multibillion-euro fines that the commission has previously slapped on Big Tech companies in antitrust<\/a>cases<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Apple and Meta have to comply with the decisions within 60 days or risk unspecified \u201cperiodic penalty payments,\u201d the commission said. <\/p>\n

The decisions were expected to come in March, but officials apparently held off amid an escalating trans-Atlantic trade war with U.S. President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly complained about regulations from Brussels affecting American companies. <\/p>\n

The penalties were issued under the EU\u2019s Digital Markets Act, also known as the DMA. It\u2019s a sweeping rulebook that amounts to a set of do\u2019s and don\u2019ts<\/a> designed to give consumers and businesses more choice and prevent Big Tech \u201cgatekeepers\u201d from cornering digital markets. <\/p>\n

The DMA seeks to ensure \u201cthat citizens have full control over when and how their data is used online, and businesses can freely communicate with their own customers,\u201d Henna Virkkunen, the commission\u2019s executive vice-president for tech sovereignty, said in a statement. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe decisions adopted today find that both Apple and Meta have taken away this free choice from their users and are required to change their behavior,\u201d Virkkunen said. <\/p>\n

Both companies indicated they would appeal. <\/p>\n

Apple accused the commission of \u201cunfairly targeting\u201d the iPhone maker, and said it “continues to move the goal posts\u201d despite the company’s efforts to comply with the rules. <\/p>\n

Meta Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan said in a statement that the \u201cCommission is attempting to handicap successful American businesses while allowing Chinese and European companies to operate under different standards.\u201d <\/p>\n

In the App Store case, the Commission had accused the iPhone<\/a> maker of imposing unfair rules preventing app developers from freely steering consumers to other channels.<\/p>\n

Among the DMA\u2019s provisions are requirements to let developers inform customers of cheaper purchasing options and direct them to those offers. <\/p>\n

The commission said it ordered Apple to remove technical and commercial restrictions that prevent developers from steering users to other channels, and to end \u201cnon-compliant\u201d conduct. <\/p>\n

Apple said it has \u201cspent hundreds of thousands of engineering hours and made dozens of changes to comply with this law, none of which our users have asked for.” <\/p>\n

\u201cDespite countless meetings, the Commission continues to move the goal posts every step of the way,” the company said. <\/p>\n

The EU\u2019s Meta investigation centered on the company\u2019s strategy to comply with strict European data privacy rules<\/a> by giving users the option of paying for ad-free versions of Facebook and Instagram. <\/p>\n

Users could pay at least 10 euros ($11) a month to avoid being targeted by ads based on their personal data. The U.S. tech giant rolled out the option after the European Union\u2019s top court ruled Meta must first get consent<\/a> before showing ads to users, in a decision that threatened its business model of tailoring ads based on individual users\u2019 online interests and digital activity. <\/p>\n

Regulators took issue with Meta\u2019s model, saying it doesn\u2019t allow users to exercise their right to \u201cfreely consent\u201d to allowing their personal data from its various services, which also including Facebook Marketplace, WhatsApp, and Messenger, to be combined for personalized ads.<\/p>\n

Meta rolled out a third option in November giving Facebook and Instagram users in Europe the option to see fewer personalized ads if they don\u2019t want to pay for an ad-free subscription. The commission said it’s \u201ccurrently assessing\u201d this option and continues to hold talks with Meta, and has asked the company to provide evidence of the new option’s impact.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis isn\u2019t just about a fine; the Commission forcing us to change our business model effectively imposes a multi-billion-dollar tariff on Meta while requiring us to offer an inferior service,” Kaplan said. “And by unfairly restricting personalized advertising the European Commission is also hurting European businesses and economies.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

LONDON — European Union watchdogs fined Apple and Meta hundreds of millions of euros Wednesday as they stepped up enforcement of the 27-nation bloc\u2019s digital competition rules. The European Commission imposed a 500 million euro ($571 million) fine on Apple for preventing app makers from pointing users to cheaper options outside its App Store. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7549,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7548"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7548\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7550,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7548\/revisions\/7550"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}