{"id":10894,"date":"2025-11-20T20:41:16","date_gmt":"2025-11-20T20:41:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/meta-ordered-to-pay-e479-million-to-spanish-media-outlets\/"},"modified":"2025-11-20T20:41:16","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T20:41:16","slug":"meta-ordered-to-pay-e479-million-to-spanish-media-outlets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/meta-ordered-to-pay-e479-million-to-spanish-media-outlets\/","title":{"rendered":"Meta ordered to pay \u20ac479 million to Spanish media outlets"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<p class=\"col-body mb-4 leading-7 text-[18px] md:leading-8 break-words min-w-0 charcoal-color\">Stop me if you&rsquo;ve heard this one before: Meta has been fined for unlawfully processing user data to gain a market advantage. On Thursday, <em>Reuters<\/em> reported that a Madrid court ordered the company to pay &euro;479 million ($552 million) in damages to 87 Spanish media outlets. The fine stems from the company changing its legal grounds for harvesting personal data after new regulations took effect.<\/p>\n<p class=\"col-body mb-4 leading-7 text-[18px] md:leading-8 break-words min-w-0 charcoal-color\">The court found that Meta&rsquo;s data collection practices violated the EU&rsquo;s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) &mdash; and, by extension, Spanish antitrust law. After the GDPR took effect in 2018, the company changed its legal grounds for collecting data on Facebook and Instagram from user consent to &ldquo;necessity for the performance of a contract.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p class=\"col-body mb-4 leading-7 text-[18px] md:leading-8 break-words min-w-0 charcoal-color\">Regulators later ruled against that justification, and Meta reverted to user consent as its basis in 2023. But Spanish digital media outlets sued for damages, leading to today&rsquo;s fine. The court ruled that Meta gained a &ldquo;significant competitive advantage&rdquo; by processing user data that way. The court calculated the penalty as a percentage of the company&rsquo;s ad revenue over the five years it used the unlawful rationale.<\/p>\n<div class=\"col-fullbleed mb-4 bg-marshmallow pb-5 dark:bg-ramones md:invisible md:mb-0 md:h-0 md:overflow-hidden md:pb-0\">\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<div class=\"flex w-full flex-nowrap justify-center\">\n<div class=\"flex\" id=\"_R_33ipqtialuknpfmlbH1_\">\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"col-body mb-4 hidden pb-5 dark:bg-ramones md:block\">\n<div class=\"flex w-full flex-nowrap justify-center\">\n<div class=\"flex\" id=\"_R_53ipqtialuknpfmlbH1_\">\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"internal-linking-related-contents\"><a href=\"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/12-weeks-jail-for-school-it-support-technician-who-took-upskirt-videos-of-teachers\/\" class=\"template-1\"><span class=\"cta\">News :<\/span><span class=\"postTitle\">&lt;div&gt;12 weeks' jail for school IT support technician who took upskirt videos of teachers&lt;\/div&gt;<\/span><\/a><\/div><p class=\"col-body mb-4 leading-7 text-[18px] md:leading-8 break-words min-w-0 charcoal-color\">&ldquo;The illicit treatment of this enormous quantity of personal data meant Meta had an advantage that Spanish online media could not match,&rdquo; the Madrid court wrote in a statement (via <em>The Associated Press<\/em>). &ldquo;Meta&rsquo;s actions harmed the online advertising revenues of Spanish digital media outlets.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p class=\"col-body mb-4 leading-7 text-[18px] md:leading-8 break-words min-w-0 charcoal-color\">Meta contested the penalty and says it will appeal. &ldquo;This is a baseless claim that lacks any evidence of alleged harm and wilfully ignores how the online advertising industry works,&rdquo; the company wrote in a statement to <em>Reuters<\/em>. &ldquo;Meta complies with all applicable laws and has provided clear choices, transparent information and given users a range of tools to control their experience on our services.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><sub>Meta ordered to pay &euro;479 million to Spanish media outlets<\/sub><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Stop me if you&rsquo;ve heard this one before: Meta has been fined for unlawfully processing user data to gain a market advantage. On Thursday, Reuters reported that a Madrid court ordered the company to pay &euro;479 million ($552 million) in damages to 87 Spanish media outlets. The fine stems from the company changing its legal&#8230;<\/p>\n<p class=\"more-link-wrap\"><a href=\"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/meta-ordered-to-pay-e479-million-to-spanish-media-outlets\/\" class=\"more-link\">Read More<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &ldquo;Meta ordered to pay \u20ac479 million to Spanish media outlets&rdquo;<\/span> &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10895,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10894\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}