WOW!

Facebook was just slapped with a massive fine for privacy violations.

Ireland has levied a fine against the social media giant because of their advertising policy which gave the company improper access to users' data.

From Just the News:

Facebook parent company Meta was hit with a massive fine by Irish regulators this week over the company's personalized ad policies that tailor advertisements to reflect what people do on the Internet.

The tech giant was slammed with two fines totaling about 390 million euros, a little over $400 million in U.S. dollars. The decision was handed down by Ireland's Data Protection Commission.

We've all experienced this creepy advertising. You just have random thought and Facebook or Instagram, both owned by Meta, will show you an advertisement based on it.

It's weird, creepy, and an invasion of privacy. Even though we probably all "agreed" to the terms.

Facebook was found to have violated the European Union's privacy rules by essentially forcing users to agree to have their data shared with advertisers in order to customize ad packages to individual users.

The company "is not entitled to rely on the ‘contract' legal basis to deliver behavioral adverts on Facebook and Instagram," the Irish DPC said.

Facebook has vowed to appeal the decisions.

If this is a violation of European Union law, you can expect that many other countries outside of Ireland will begin levying similar fines on Meta.

The legal battle that Facebook is promising should be very interesting.