Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) has fined Meta over its handling of user data, following hundreds of millions of dollars in similar fines and potentially putting parts of its ad business at risk. The DPC announced today that Meta must pay €210 million (around $222 million) for violating European Union privacy rules with Facebook’s practices, plus €180 million (around $191 million) over similar violations with Instagram.
The fines stem from two 2018 complaints about how Meta — formerly Facebook — complied with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which went into effect that year. Both Facebook and Instagram’s terms of service began requiring users to accept a new terms of service contract that included the processing…