European Union accuses Facebook owner Meta of breaking digital rules with paid ad-free option

European Union regulators accused Meta of breaching the bloc’s new digital competition rulebook.

European Union regulators accused social media company Meta Platforms on Monday of breaching the bloc's new digital competition rulebook by forcing Facebook and Instagram users to choose between seeing ads or paying to avoid them.

Meta began giving European users the option in November of paying for ad-free versions of Facebook and Instagram as a way to comply with the continent’s strict data privacy rules.

Users can pay at least 10 euros ($10.75) a month to avoid being targeted by ads based on their personal data. The U.S. tech giant rolled out the option after the European Union’s top court ruled Meta must first get consent before showing ads to users, in a decision that threatened its business model of tailoring ads based on individual users' online interests and digital activity.

The European Commission, the EU's executive arm, said preliminary findings of its investigation show that Meta's “pay or consent” advertising model was in breach of the 27-nation bloc’s Digital Markets Act.

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Meta's model doesn't allow users to exercise their right to “freely consent” to allowing their personal data from its various services, including Facebook, Instagram, Marketplace, WhatsApp, and Messenger, to be combined to target them with personalised online ads, the commission said.

Meta's model also doesn't give users the option of a service that's less personalised but still equivalent to its social networks, it said.