The European Commission said that Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) may face daily fines if limited changes that the company has proposed to its pay-or-consent model do not comply with an antitrust order issued in April, Reuters reported.
The EU competition regulator noted that Meta will only make limited changes to its pay-or-consent model launched in November 2024, the report added.
“The Commission cannot confirm at this stage if these are sufficient to comply with the main parameters of compliance outlined in its non-compliance Decision,” a Commission spokesperson said in an email to the news agency, according to the report.
“With this in mind, we will consider the next steps, including recalling that continuous non-compliance could entail the application of periodic penalty payments running as of 27 June 2025, as indicated in the non-compliance decision,” the spokesperson noted.
The European Commission and Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Seeking Alpha.
In April, the European Commission fined Meta (NASDAQ:META) €200M for allegedly breaching the EU’s Digital Markets Act, or DMA.
The regulator said Meta’s pay-or-consent model introduced in November 2023 violated the DMA in the period up to November 2024, when it made chnages to use less personal data for targeted advertising. The Commission has been scrutinizing the changes since then.
The model gives Facebook and Instagram users, who consent to see ads, a free service, while customers who pay for a subscription get an ad-free service.
The Commission had also fined Apple (AAPL) in April, €500M, for allegedly violating the DMA by preventing app makers from pointing users to cheaper options outside its App Store. The U.S. tech giant was given a June 26 deadline to bring changes to its App Store rules.
On Thursday, Apple announced changes to its App Store for users in the EU to comply with the DMA and avoid escalating financial penalties.
In September 2023, the European Commission designated for the first time six gatekeepers — Alphabet, Amazon (AMZN), Apple, Meta, Microsoft (MSFT) and Chinese tech giant ByteDance (BDNCE) — under the DMA. Certain products provided by these companies come under the DMA and the EU’s Digital Services Act, or DSA — which regulates online intermediaries and platforms that millions of Europeans use every day. The DSA protects consumers and their rights online.