LONDON — 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.
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 personalized online ads, the commission said.
Meta's model also doesn't give users the option of a service that's less personalized but still equivalent to its social networks, it said.
''Subscription for no ads follows the direction of the highest court in Europe and complies with the DMA,'' Meta said in a statement. ''We look forward to further constructive dialogue with the European Commission to bring this investigation to a close.''
The commission had opened its investigation shortly after the rulebook, also known as the DMA, took effect in March. It's a sweeping set of regulations aimed at preventing tech ''gatekeepers'' from cornering digital markets under threat of heavy financial penalties.
