Investors are staying on the sidelines amid a broad selloff in tech stocks this year. Shares of Facebook parent Meta are down more than 30% this year amid a troubling macro environment and weaker-than-expected results.
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Facebook parent company Meta was on Monday accused by EU regulators of failing to comply with the bloc’s landmark antitrust rules over its recently introduced ad-supported social networking service.
The Commission labelled the ad-supported subscription option a “pay or consent” model — which means users have to either pay to use Meta’s platforms ad-free, or consent to their data being processed for personalized advertising. The service was introduced for Facebook and Instagram in Europe last year.
“In the Commission’s preliminary view, this binary choice forces users to consent to the combination of their personal data and fails to provide them a less personalised but equivalent version of Meta’s social networks,” regulators said in a statement Monday.
CNBC has reached out to Meta for comment. The company separately told Reuters in a statement that its ad-supported subscription model “follows the direction of the highest court in Europe and complies with the DMA.”
Meta introduced the new model in response to a ruling from the European Court of Justice, the EU’s top court, last year that a company may offer an “alternative” version of its service that does not rely on data collection for ads. Meta has previously pointed to this ruling as a reason for introducing the subscription offer.
This breaking news story is being updated.