While PoPIA seemingly lacks any teeth in South Africa, over in Europe, GDPR is being enforced with regularity against big tech firms for the way data is handled. The latest to receive a fine is Meta (formerly Facebook), which has garnered its largest fine to date at €405 million.

The fine is also the second largest fine levelled against tech companies in the region, along with being the third time that Meta in particular has been cited by regulators.

First reported by Politico, the fine by the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) stems from the way in which privacy settings are controlled within Instagram for accounts held by children.

The DPC confirmed that more details would be shared publicly next week, but in the interim the regulator notes that it was investigating Instagram over the use of business accounts by children, and in particular how these profiles allowed for personal data like email addresses and phone numbers were made publicly visible.

Added to this, the aforementioned investigation says it also looked into how Instagram’s default settings which made all new accounts, including those of children, automatically set to publicly visible.

In response to the fine, Meta claims that the settings referred to are old ones that have since been addressed by the company.

“This inquiry focused on old settings that we updated over a year ago, and we’ve since released many new features to help keep teens safe and their information private,” a Meta spokesperson told Politico.

“Anyone under 18 automatically has their account set to private when they join Instagram, so only people they know can see what they post, and adults can’t message teens who don’t follow them. We engaged fully with the DPC throughout their inquiry, and we’re carefully reviewing their final decision,” they added.

If that is indeed the case, we could see the appeal of this fine be successful, or at the very least lead to a lesser amount.

That said, with the fines continuing to rack up against Meta in the EU, you have to wonder why similar fines are not being dished out in South Africa, especially as all of the companies platforms and services are accessible locally and quite popular.

[Image – Photo by Muhammad Asyfaul on Unsplash]