{"id":87937,"date":"2026-05-26T21:28:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-26T21:28:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/87937\/"},"modified":"2026-05-26T21:28:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T21:28:13","slug":"irish-data-watchdog-pushed-norwegian-citizen-to-settle-privacy-case-with-meta-euobserver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/87937\/","title":{"rendered":"Irish data watchdog pushed Norwegian citizen to settle privacy case with Meta \u2013 EUobserver"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rights groups are appalled at data regulators backing Meta in yet another case of a privacy breach.<\/p>\n

A Norwegian citizen lodged a complaint in 2024 against Meta, owner of Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp, for the processing of personal data for marketing purposes.<\/p>\n

The complaint was passed on to Ireland\u2019s Data Protection Commission (DPC), since Meta\u2019s European headquarters are located there. In April this year, the Irish supervisory body for the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) asked the complainant to settle with Meta.<\/p>\n

The complainant refused.<\/p>\n

The European Data Protection Board\u2019s (EDPB) guidelines<\/a> on settlements don\u2019t allow for hush money to close a case when the issue affects a large number of data subjects.<\/p>\n

Since Mark Zuckerberg\u2019s tech giant started using a model in which those using the free-version of Meta\u2019s apps had to deal with personalised adverts, EDPB has also stated that \u2018Pay-or-Consent\u2019 policies are incompatible with GDPR requirements for free, valid consent.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Due to so many big tech firms being registered in Ireland, its DPS holds the role of primary data enforcer for Meta<\/a>. However, that hasn\u2019t stopped close relations between the regulator and the digital giant, the most recent evidence of which was the appointment of a former Meta spokesperson<\/a> for the role of Data Protection Commissioner for Ireland.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cHow often has the DPC misused an \u2018amicable settlement\u2019 to gaslight Europeans with legitimate GDPR complaints about tech giants in Ireland?\u201d Eoin Dubsky, digital rights campaigner at Ek\u014d<\/a>, a corporate watchdog NGO, told EUobserver.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt looks like the Data Protection Commission will only uphold our rights once all other options have been exhausted.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Meta faced a \u20ac200m fine<\/a> by the European Commission<\/a> in 2025 for not providing the \u201cchoice of a service that uses less of their personal data.\u201d Meta has appealed the fine.<\/p>\n

EDPB and Ireland\u2019s DPC did not respond to a request for a comment in time for publication.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rights groups are appalled at data regulators backing Meta in yet another case of a privacy breach. A…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":87938,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[154],"tags":[280,10231,47937,618,47935,10229,47936,10230],"class_list":["post-87937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mark-zuckerberg","tag-typedefinedterm","tag-identifier30","tag-identifier4381","tag-mark-zuckerberg","tag-namebig-tech","tag-namedigital","tag-termcodebig-tech","tag-termcodedigital"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116643004628000025","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87937\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}