Italy fines Meta $880M over Facebook access to users’ photos without consent

Detailed summary

The Italian data protection authority gives Meta 60 days to make the feature opt-in and keep it disabled by default.

The fine follows an investigation by Italy’s data protection authority into a Facebook feature introduced in 2023. The feature, called “Get suggestions from your gallery while browsing Facebook”, allows the platform to suggest photos and videos stored on users’ phones as potential posts.

The regulator found that Facebook requested a single, general permission to access users’ photo galleries, without clearly explaining that this also enabled the gallery-suggestion feature. The function was activated by default, and the permission could allow the app to access the entire photo archive on an Android device, including associated metadata.

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