Facebook owner Meta fined record £1billion in row over data transfers – what it means for you

META, the company behind Facebook and WhatsApp, has been slapped with a record $1.3billion (£1billion) fine.

It arrives behind claims that the social media giant had abused its users’ data.

It is the biggest fine handed out under the EU’s General Data Protection Regulations, or GDPR. 

The penalty is higher than the previous record $821.20million (£660million) fine for Amazon.

The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) said that Meta had broken the EU’s data protection rules by transferring data between Europe and the US.

Meta failed to protect European users from having their data used under US law in doing so, regulators said today.

The tech behemoth will now have to either delete the data entirely or move it back to Europe.

Meta has said it will appeal the ruling.

There will apparently be no sudden impact on Facebook users, either.

“This decision is flawed, unjustified and sets a dangerous precedent for the countless other companies transferring data between the EU and US,” Meta’s President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg and Chief Legal Officer Jennifer Newstead said in a statement on Monday.

“There is no immediate disruption to Facebook because the decision includes implementation periods that run until later this year,” the pair added.

The DPC had been investigating Meta Ireland’s transfer of EU data to the US since 2020.

Europe's highest court ruled in 2020 that a EU-US data transfer agreement used by Meta was invalid, over international surveillance concerns.

The DPC said it disagreed with the fine and measure that it was imposing on Meta.

However, the watchdog had been pushed by the pan-European network of national regulators, the European Data Protection Board (EDPB).