EU fines Apple and Meta $800 million for antitrust violations

The European Union today imposed financial penalties on Apple and Meta for violating the bloc’s digital competition laws.

The European Commission, the EU’s executive body, said it imposed fines of €500 million ($571 million) on Apple and €200 million ($228.4 million) on Meta for violations of the Digital Markets Act.

EU officials explained that Apple failed to comply with the law’s so-called anti-restriction obligations, which require the company to allow developers to freely inform users about alternative offers available outside its App Store.

The European Commission ordered the company to remove technical and commercial restrictions that impede this and refrain from repeating this non-compliant behavior in the future. As for Meta, the European Commission found that the company violated the law when it required users to either agree to share their data or pay a fee to use Facebook and Instagram without ads, after the company introduced a paid subscription model in November 2023.