Italy hits Meta with €805m fine over privacy law violation

Italian authorities fined Facebook’s parent company Meta €805 million for using photos and videos from Android phones without users’ specific consent, the Italian Data Protection Authority said in a statement Saturday. The fine concerned the “camera roll suggestions when browsing Facebook” feature, which suggests photos and videos from a phone’s gallery for users to add to posts.

The feature violates the Italian law implementing the EU’s ePrivacy directive, the authority said. It is by far the largest fine ever imposed by the Italian regulator.

The investigation, launched in 2025, established that access to a user’s camera roll is requested with a single permission for the entire app, which the authority said covers multiple features with different needs. The authorization request was preceded by a generic warning that didn’t allow users to understand that they were authorizing picture and video suggestions, the authority said.