Meta's €805 Million Fine: Italy's Case Over Facebook's Gallery Feature
Italy's privacy regulator fined Meta €805 million over a Facebook Android feature that suggests photos from your gallery, saying it did not obtain specific consent, and Meta plans to appeal.
Key Takeaways
- Italy's privacy regulator fined Meta €805 million, about $887 million, over a Facebook feature on Android.
- The Garante says the app accessed photos and videos without specific consent or adequate information.
- The fine equals about 0.47% of Meta's global turnover.
- The Garante has given Meta 60 days to start the feature switched off and request consent separately.
- Meta strongly disagrees, calls the amount disproportionate and intends to appeal.
- The ruling does not address AI training on gallery content, which Meta denies.
Permission prompts are easy to tap through. Italy's privacy regulator has now fined Meta €805 million over how Facebook's Android app asked for gallery access.
The Garante fined Meta over an Android feature on Facebook that suggests photos and videos from your gallery as ideas for posts. The regulator says Meta accessed that material without specific consent and without properly informing users.
Meta strongly disagrees and plans to appeal, so here is what was found, what Meta says, and what happens next. Let's get started.
Unpacking Italy's Meta Fine
Imagine a feature that offers to help you post and, in the Garante's account, asks for access to your whole camera roll through a vague prompt. Italy's data protection authority says that is what Facebook's Android app did, and it has put an €805 million price tag on it.
The Garante announced the fine against Meta Platforms Ireland Limited on Saturday, about $887 million as the Associated Press converted it. It amounts to about 0.47% of the group's global turnover.
The Garante says the amount reflects the number of people involved, an earlier 2019 measure against the company and Meta's limited cooperation. Meta has said it strongly disagrees, calls the amount disproportionate and intends to appeal, so this story is far from over.
Tracing the Gallery Feature
The feature at the centre is called “Get suggestions from gallery when browsing Facebook”. As you browse, it proposes images and clips stored on your handset as possible posts, a bit like a friend rummaging through your shoebox of prints and asking which one to share.
According to the Garante, the feature has been available since 2023. The probe began in July 2025 after a complaint from a consumer protection centre in Bolzano, and the regulator added its own technical analysis to the file.
The Garante's focus is narrow. It says a smartphone is part of a person's private sphere, so any access to what is on it needs free and informed consent, whether or not data is transmitted and whether or not anyone is harmed.
Decoding One Permission Prompt
Here is the crux of the Garante's case: one permission, many jobs. According to the Garante, Facebook used one gallery permission for the whole app, and that permission bundled several functions with different purposes.
The Garante says the prompt that came first used a generic line about enabling other features, which did not let users see they were also approving gallery suggestions. It also found the suggestions setting came preset as active. A full gallery permission, it adds, lets an app read the whole photo archive, normally with no expiry.
Once access is granted, the Garante says, neither the user nor the authority can check which information is actually used. That is the heart of its argument for why consent has to be specific, free and informed.
Weighing Meta's Response
Meta's reply was blunt. A spokesperson said the company strongly disagrees with the Garante's assessment of the facts and its application of the law, and considers the amount of the fine disproportionate.
The company describes the tool as a simple feature that helps people post photos and videos. It points out that users must grant a permission on their device before the feature works, and that they can change that permission at any time in settings.
Meta Platforms Ireland Limited also challenged Italy's jurisdiction, in favour of the Irish authority. The Garante rejected that, saying the ePrivacy rules have no one-stop-shop mechanism. Meta says it intends to appeal.
Watching the Deadlines Ahead
The Garante has set the deadlines. Within 60 days it wants Meta to put the feature in the off position at the start and to request consent in its own dedicated prompt, one that spells out the purpose, the need for gallery access and the way to disable it.
The Garante requires Meta to report within 30 days on steps started and within 90 days on measures adopted. It says that if the deadline passes without changes, the feature cannot be activated for users without valid consent.
Two things sit outside this ruling. The ruling did not look at any use of gallery material for AI training, which Meta denies, and the Garante reserved the right to examine separately a newer feature that handles gallery files in the cloud.
Long Story Short
This case turns on a simple idea: access to a phone is a private matter, and consent has to be specific. The Garante says a single, vague prompt did not meet that bar for a feature that reads photos and videos. Meta calls the fine disproportionate, so the final word is not in. The Garante has given Meta 60 days to start the feature switched off and ask users again, though Meta says it will appeal, so the order and the amount may still change. For readers, the practical lesson is small and free. Check which apps can see your camera roll and whether you remember agreeing to it. For companies, the lesson is that a permission screen is part of the product, and one regulator read it very closely.