Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Meta has been hit with a record-breaking $1.3 billion fine (€1.2 billion) by EU data regulators, and ordered to stop transferring the Facebook data of EU citizens to the US, according to reports from Bloomberg and Politico. EU courts believe such data transfers expose EU citizens to privacy violations — a complaint that stems back to 2013 and the revelations by whistleblower Edward Snowden about US mass surveillance.
Although the fine is the headline figure — exceeding the previous EU record of €746 million levied against Amazon in 2021 for similar privacy violations — it’s the order to stop data transfers that is potentially most significant.
Transferring data to the US is critical for Meta’s vast ad-targeting operation, which relies…
