Meta accused of breaking EU digital law by charging for ad-free social networks

The European Commission has accused Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta of breaching the EU’s new digital laws with an advertising model that charges users for ad-free versions of Facebook and Instagram.

Meta launched a “pay or consent” model last year in an effort to comply with the bloc’s data privacy rules, under which users pay a monthly fee for an ad-free version of Facebook or Instagram that does not use their personal data for advertising purposes. If users do not pay, their data is used to tailor personalised adverts that appear in their social media feeds.