Meta's €200M DMA fine over 'pay or consent'
€200M
≈ $216M at the time
European Commission
EU · 2025
Status: Final
What happened
In one of the first Digital Markets Act fines, the Commission found that Meta's pay-or-consent model forced Facebook and Instagram users to either pay a subscription or accept full data combination for personalised ads, without a genuine less-data alternative. Meta adjusted the model after the decision.
How it affected users
Users effectively had to pay for privacy, so their consent to tracking was not freely given.
Status timeline
Apr 23, 2025
Penalty announced.
Sources
Last verified 2026-07-02. Spotted an error? Report a correction.
Cite this entry
Deepak Gupta, "Meta's €200M DMA fine over 'pay or consent'," Tech Fines Directory, guptadeepak.com, 2025-04-23. https://guptadeepak.com/tech-fines/violation/meta-eu-dma-payorconsent-2025/