The complaints, which date back to May 2018, take aim at the tech giant’s so-called forced consent to continue tracking and targeting users by processing their personal data to build profiles for behavioral advertising, so the outcome could have major ramifications for how Meta operates if regulators order the company to amend its practices.“As indicated in our press release, the EDPB looked into whether or not the processing of personal data for the performance of a contract is a suitable legal basis for behavioural advertising, but at this point in time we cannot confirm what the EDPB’s decision in this matter was.” The DPC also declined to comment on the newspaper’s report — but deputy commissioner Graham Doyle confirmed to us that it will announce binding decisions on these complaints in early January.We’ve engaged fully with the DPC on their inquiries and will continue to engage with them as they finalise their decision.” The company was recently spotted in a filing setting aside €3 billion for data protection fines in 2022 and 2023 — a large chunk of which has yet to land.GDPR fines for Meta so far this year include a €265 million penalty for a Facebook data-scraping breach last month; €405 million for an Instagram violation of children’s privacy back in September; and €17 million for several 2018 Facebook data breaches issued in March — plus France’s data protection watchdog hit Meta with a €60 million penalty in January over Facebook cookie consent violations of the EU’s ePrivacy Directive — for a total of €747 million in publicly disclosed EU data protection and privacy fines…so, per its filing, the tech giant appears to be expecting 2023 to be considerably more expensive for its European business.(See, e.g., Apple’s App Tracking Transparency “request to track” feature for third-party iOS apps, where denials were running at around 75%, per Adjust data released earlier this year and covered by MediaPost.)"