Meta platform paid penalty $275 million for data leak

The decline in Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s wealth has caused him to fall out of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index’s top 20 list of the world’s wealthiest people. With “prioritisation and effectiveness” the company will “support us navigate its environment but also emerge an even bigger and more powerful company,” the CEO assured investors as 2023 approached.

Payment of $275,000,000.00 in penalties by the Meta Platform

In light of a data security breach that occurred in 2021, Facebook’s parent company, Meta platform, paid a penalty of approximately $275 million to Irish policymakers for violating the EU’s GDPR, a law enacted in 2018 to bolster the privacy of European consumers.

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With the help of a massive data having to scrape scheme in April, hackers were able to obtain the names, locations, and birthdates of over 500 million social media users, which they then offered for sale on a hackers forum. This violates infringement of the GDPR, which mandates that companies protect customer information.

This enormous fee is the newest in a series of serious financial punishments levied against the once-dominant social media platform. In September of this year, the Irish Data Protection Commission reportedly fined the Meta platform $400 million for “mistreatment of children’s data.” The New York Times writes that the fine was reported in the article. Earlier, in April of last year, the same authorities had fined Meta $235 million for multiple violations involving its messaging platform, WhatsApp.

Read Also: Experts Call for Rules to Protect Privacy Law

The GDPR in the European Union is far more stringent than its American counterpart whenever it regards safeguarding individuals’ privacy online. There have been calls for similar regulations in the United States, but as of yet, no such law has been passed at the federal level.

However, harsher penalties are possible under European Union law than in American law. Due to the high concentration of major tech companies with EU headquarters in Ireland, including such Meta, Google, and Twitter, this same Irish Data Protection Commission is frequently tasked with enforcement and penalties across Europe.

The parent company, formerly known as Facebook, was rebranded as Meta in an effort to reflect CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s interest in creating a “metaverse.” Meta has already had to lay off over 11,000 employees around the world due to something CEO Mark Zuckerberg has called “one of the worst downturns in the company’s history,” and it is unknown at this time if Meta will apply this week’s judgement as it did for the two previous choices.

Meta’s stock price has plummeted in recent times, and the company has just reported a 50% quarterly profit drop. To put it bluntly, I take full responsibility for all the decisions we’ve made and the direction we’ve gone in.” I apologise to everyone, but I owe an especially deep debt of gratitude to those who are suffering as a result of this “According to Zuckerberg’s announcement letter.