Facebook owner Meta Platforms seeks to stop privacy breach fine in Norway

OSLO - Meta Platforms will ask a court in Norway on Tuesday (Aug 22) to stop a fine the country's data regulator has imposed on the owner of Facebook and Instagram for breaching users' privacy, in a case that could have wider European implications.

Since Aug 14, Meta Platforms has been fined one million crowns (S$61,556) per day for harvesting users' data and using it to target advertising at them, called behavioural advertising, a business model common to Big Tech.

Meta Platforms is asking for a temporary injunction against the order, which imposes a daily fine through to Nov 3.

Meta said on Aug 1 it intended to ask consent from users in the European Union and the European Economic Area (EEA), the European single market, before allowing behavioural advertising.

"We have already announced our intention to transition to the legal basis of Consent for personalised advertising for people in the EU and EEA," Meta said in an emailed statement to Reuters.

Regulator, Datatilsynet, will defend the fine in court. It said that it was unclear when, and how, Meta would seek consent from users and that, in the meantime, their rights were being violated.

"Datatilsynet will argue that there is no basis for an injunction," Tobias Judin, the regulator's head of international section, told Reuters.

Datatilsynet could make the fine permanent by referring its decision to the European Data Protection Board, which has the power to do so, if it agrees with the Norwegian regulator's decision.

That could also widen the decision's territorial scope to the rest of Europe. Datatilsynet had yet to take this step.

The hearing at the Oslo district court will last two days.

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