Italy just fined Meta $887 million for silently harvesting the personal photos and videos of 20 million Android phone users — and the real scandal is that it took a foreign government to do what American regulators refuse to.
The Italian Data Protection Authority, known as the Garante, found that Facebook's Android app accessed users' photo galleries without specific consent through a "Camera Roll Sharing Suggestions" feature launched in 2023. The feature, set to enabled by default, recommended photos from a user's phone as post ideas. But the permission was buried under a vague prompt to "enable other functions" that gave no indication gallery access was being granted. The Italian agency said this generic warning "does not allow the user to understand that they are also authorizing gallery suggestions" and left users and authorities unable "to verify which information is actually being used," according to the International Business Times.
The Garante ruled this violated Article 122 of Italy's Privacy Code, which treats a smartphone as part of a person's private sphere and requires free and informed consent for any access — even if no data leaves the device and no harm is done, TNW reported. The regulator also cited Meta's poor cooperation and the duration of the violation. About 20 million Italian Android users were affected.
The fine equals roughly 0.47% of Meta's global revenue — a rounding error for a company that mines user data as its primary resource. Meta must now, within 60 days, disable the feature by default and seek separate, specific consent from users.
Meta tried to route the case to Ireland, where its EU headquarters sits and where regulators have a reputation for going soft on Big Tech. The Garante rejected that maneuver, noting it acted under ePrivacy rules with no one-stop-shop mechanism, as TNW reported. Meta was not immediately available for comment.
So here is the question that should anger every American: where is our Garante? Italy decided that accessing a citizen's phone without consent warrants a fine approaching $1 billion. Congress, meanwhile, has not passed a federal data privacy law. Both parties talk tough on Big Tech when cameras are rolling, but when it comes to protecting Americans from being mined as data, Washington delivers nothing. The same phones, the same feature, the same silent harvesting — and no American regulator has lifted a finger.
TNW noted the Italian probe did not examine whether gallery content was used to train AI, which Meta denies, and the Garante will examine a cloud processing feature separately.
The fine is real. The violation is real. The silence from Washington is deafening. Americans' personal photos deserve at least as much protection as Italians' — and right now, they get none.
