Meta fined $220mn by Africa’s most populous state

The American firm has discriminated against Nigerian users by forcing “abusive” privacy policies on them, authorities claim

Nigeria has hit US tech giant Meta with a $220 million fine for breaching local data protection and privacy laws, the West African nation’s consumer protection agency announced on Tuesday.

Investigations found that Meta policies deny Nigerian users the right to withhold consent to the gathering, use, and distribution of personal data, Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) chief Adamu Abdullahi said. Meta is the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

According to Abdullahi, the 38-month inquiry, carried out in collaboration with the Nigeria Data Protection Commission (NDPC), began in 2021 after WhatsApp updated its privacy policy.

“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.

The FCCPC first announced action against Meta late last week, accusing the firm of engaging in “abusive and invasive” practices against data subjects in Nigeria over a “protracted period of time.” 

The competition agency said the US tech giant proposed a “remedy package” in April that did not address concerns.

In an order dated July 18, the commission instructed 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.

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Meta has yet to respond publicly to the allegations.

As of December last year, Africa’s most populous nation, with over 200 million people and around 164 million internet subscriptions, had over 51 million WhatsApp users, according to its Communications Ministry.

Nigeria is not the first country to hold Meta accountable for data breaches. Türkiye 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. Earlier this month, the European Union accused Meta of failing to follow antitrust regulations.