By Gwladys Fouche
OSLO (Reuters) – Meta Platforms is asking a court in Norway to stop a fine the Scandinavian country’s data regulator has imposed on the owner of Facebook and Instagram for violating users’ privacy, according to a court order charge.
Meta Platforms will be fined 1 million kroner ($97,700) a day from August 14 for privacy violations, Norway’s data protection authority told Reuters on Monday, in a decision that could have broader European implications.
Meta Platforms is seeking a preliminary injunction against the injunction, according to a court filing. The petition will be presented on August 22 during a two-day hearing.
Meta Platforms did not respond to a request for comment. The company’s Norwegian lawyer did not immediately respond to an email request for comment.
Norway’s data regulator, Datatilsynet, said Meta Platforms was trying to stop the imposition of the fine.
“They say the court should suspend our order pending a full trial,” Tobias Judin, head of Datatilsynet’s international division, told Reuters. “Datatilsynet will argue that there is no basis for an injunction.”
The regulator has said that Meta cannot collect user data in Norway, such as users’ physical locations, and use it to target ads to them, called behavioral advertising, a business model common among Big Tech.
The fine runs until November 3. Datatilsynet can make the fine permanent by submitting its decision to the European Data Protection Council, which is competent to do so, if it agrees with the Norwegian regulator’s decision.
This could also extend the territorial scope of the decision to the rest of Europe.
Datatilsynet had yet to take this step.
($1 = 10.2326 Norwegian Kroner)
(Reporting by Gwladys Fouche in Oslo; editing by Kirsten Donovan)
