$META: Instagram Fined $400 Million by Ireland

I wonder how many times $META has been fined this year? Just how many Irish kids are running “business accounts” on Instagram?

WSJ headline: Instagram Fined $402 Million in EU for Allegedly Mishandling Children’s Data

Sub-headline: The fine is the second largest yet under the bloc’s GDPR privacy law

Instagram is being hit with the second-largest European Union privacy fine for allegedly mishandling data about children, ramping up the bloc’s enforcement of its privacy law against big technology companies.

Ireland’s Data Protection Commission said Monday that it fined Instagram owner Meta Platforms Inc. 405 million euros ($402 million) in a long-running investigation that had looked at minors who operated business accounts on the service, potentially exposing more of their contact information than if they operated a personal account.

The Irish data regulator, which leads privacy enforcement in the EU for Meta and other technology companies with European headquarters in Ireland, said it has finalized the decision including the fine after incorporating changes ordered by a body representing all of the bloc’s privacy regulators, and planned to publish it next week.

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The link:

https://archive.ph/EGXj5

I thought $TSLA had the most lawsuits against an American company; now, I’m not so sure. $META has more lawsuits - in Ireland - and then there are all the other EU countries looking to sue?

https://archive.ph/EGXj5

"Ireland has 37 other pending privacy cases involving big tech companies. They include a case looking at whether Meta has the right to collect certain kinds of information about its users as a condition of using the service, and about whether some of the standard plumbing of digital-ad auctions comply with EU law.

Another case led by Ireland could order Facebook to stop sending data about its users to servers in the U.S. Meta has said in securities filings that if that decision is enforced before the EU and U.S. work out a new legal pathway for such data transfers, that it could suspend some of its services in Europe.

Those privacy cases are coming to a head at the same time as EU regulators have been taking a more aggressive line on enforcing its General Data Protection Regulation, after complaints from privacy activists that regulators – particularly in Ireland – have been too slow. Under the law, regulators from across the block have the right to weigh in on big cases that stretch across borders, and they have been using that right to push for additional charges and bigger fines in some recent decisions."