FCCPC says the company discriminates against Nigerian users, is forcing abusive privacy policies on them.
Nigerian regulatory body, the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) has hit US tech giant Meta with a $220 million fine for breaching Nigerian data protection and privacy laws.
In an announcement made on Tuesday, Mr. Adamu Abdullahi, head of the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC), said their Investigations found that policies of Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, denies Nigerian users the right to withhold consent to the gathering, use, and distribution of personal data.
According to the FCCPC chief, after WhatsApp updated its privacy policy in 20021, the Commission, in collaboration with the Nigeria Data Protection Commission (NDPC), carried out a 38-month long inquiry which revealed the breaches. The FCCPC chief said:
We found out that when you register for the first time to join WhatsApp, there is a column that says you have agreed for your data to be shared for research. That is opposed to other climes where you have the choice of saying yes or no so, that is discriminatory at the first instance,” he stated.
Last week, the FCCPC had announced action against Meta, accusing the firm of engaging in “abusive and invasive” practices against data subjects in Nigeria over a “protracted period of time.” Following this, the commission issued an order dated July 18, instructing Meta to immediately reinstate Nigerian users’ rights to “control the use, processing, sharing, or transfer of their data.” Additionally, it must “cease the tying and transfer of data from its WhatsApp market to its Facebook market and other third parties’ services without express consent sought and freely obtained from data subjects.”
The government has given Meta 60 days to pay the $220 million penalty for violating privacy laws, as well as reimburse an additional $35,000 for the cost of investigations. The FCCPC said that in April, the US tech giant proposed a “remedy package” , but, this did not addressed the core concerns of the commissions findings.
Meta has yet to respond publicly to the allegations.
Findings shows that Nigeria is not the first country to hold Meta accountable for data breaches. Türkey had recently fined the company 1.2 billion lira (approximately $37 million) after an investigation into data sharing on its Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp platforms. Also, earlier this month, the European Union accused Meta of failing to follow antitrust regulations.
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