In October of last year, Meta surprised by the announcement that, as part of adapting to the European WFD, it started offering a form of access to its social networks without ads and mainly its tracking functions, but did so with an unexpected payment model. And barely 10 days have passed since its announcement when the tech company surprised us again by announcing a price hike over what was originally announced.

That time, in which Meta was already identified as one of the six gatekeepersso, in addition to complying with the GDPR, there was also an adaptation to the standards set by the European Union in the DMA for the services identified in September, that is, the company announced and launched this payment method to protect privacy when I was already aware that both Facebook and Instagram had to pass special level of control.

Although Meta stated that it was adapting to European regulations with this move, we learned this last March The regulators of the common European space were not so clear and that as a result they questioned the legality (or rather the lack thereof). Not to mention the huge pushback it very logically raised among organizations and user privacy advocates when they saw it become a payment option.

What were suspicions in March, are certainties in July and this is what the European Commissioner Thierry Breton confirmed in the report that you can see above this paragraph, Preliminary conclusions of the European Commission determine that Meta did not comply with the WFD with its policy «pay or agree [el uso de tus datos]«. Of course, I emphasize that this is a preliminary conclusion, so Meta will still be able to make their case to the regulators to avoid possible sanctions.

Since the investigation started in March and the deadline for it was set at one year, we’ll have to wait until March 2025 to know the final conclusions and whether, based on them, Meta will have to face economic sanctions, which can rise up to 10% of the company’s worldwide turnover. However, it will also be interesting to see if the technology company will make any changes as a precaution in the coming months, ahead of time in response to the judgment in line with the conclusions that were published today.