Meta has been dealt one of its strongest regulatory blows in Italy after the personal data protection authority imposed a fine of $887 million on the company. The measure comes amid suspicions that the company accessed Android users’ photos and videos without clear and informed consent.
Decision follows an investigation opened in 2025
The decision was made public on Saturday by the Italian authority, following an investigation that began in 2025. According to the authorities’ official account, the case concerns the way a feature in the Facebook app operated.
According to the investigation, this function suggested photos and videos from users’ devices for posting on the platform, raising serious questions over the limits of the access granted to the app over personal content.
Main allegation: lack of information and real consent
The core of the Italian authority’s intervention is the claim that users were not properly informed and had not given the necessary consent for access to their personal galleries.
In such cases, the problem lies not only in the technical function, but in how approval is requested and obtained. The Italian authorities are treating this as a possible breach of privacy standards, not simply as an unclear option within the app.
60 days to make changes to the app
Meta has been given 60 days to disable this function as a default choice and to separately request users’ approval for access to content in their galleries.
This means that, under the decision, the company must change the way the feature is activated and how it is communicated to users, so that consent does not remain merely formal, but is clear and distinguishable.
Investigation did not cover AI training, but other questions remain
The Italian authority clarified that the investigation did not include the possibility that these materials were used to train artificial intelligence models. That practice has been denied by Meta.
However, the authority said it reserves the right to separately examine a new function launched in 2026 that enables cloud processing of content from users’ galleries. This suggests that the regulatory clash with the company may not end with this decision alone.
The case again raises the debate over how major technology platforms handle personal data and how transparent the consent they request from users really is.
Beyond the record size of the fine, the message from the Italian authorities appears clear: accessing private content without full disclosure cannot pass as a routine app feature.