The Noose is Tightening – SLOWLY – Around Social Media’s Neck

Facebook and Instagram owner Meta will be fined $100,000 a day over privacy breaches unless it fixes the issue, says Norway’s data protection board.

Norway says that Meta can’t harvest physical location data to target ads. Big tech loves doing this, so while Meta is in the cross hairs today, if this sticks, others will follow.

Norway is forwarding this to the European Data Protection Board and if they agree, they could make the fine permanent and expand it beyond Norway.

This comes after the EU’s Top Court (CJEU) said that Meta can’t harvest user data for behavioral advertising.

In December Ireland’s privacy regulator came to the same conclusion and told Meta it had to stop.

Meta says they continue to “constructively engage”, which means stall and deflect, with Ireland.

In May, Irelands Data Protection Commissioner fined Meta $1.3 billion for privacy violations and Meta was given five months to stop transferring data to the U.S.

While no one knows how all of this will play out, it does seem clear that the days of governments sticking their heads in the sand and pretending there is no problem are over.

It likely will take years to sort this out, but the problem is that if social media can’t steal, use and abuse your data, they don’t have a viable business model.

This is one to watch.

Credit: Cyber News

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