Italy fines Meta $887 million for reading 20 million users' photo galleries, $25.9 billion billed in a month

Italy's data protection authority, the Garante, fined Meta €805 million ($887 million)↗ on November 14, 2026, for reading the photo galleries of Android users without proper consent ¹²⁵. The Facebook app's gallery-suggestions feature, launched in 2023, drew on photos, videos and metadata from the phones of about 20 million Italian users after a single blanket authorization, and the setting was switched on by default ¹²⁵.

The Garante, which also cited Meta's▲+2.23% — Meta, up 2.23 percent today "lack of cooperation" ², gave the company 60 days to turn the feature off by default and request consent separately ¹⁵. Meta "strongly disagrees," calls the fine "disproportionate," and will appeal ¹².

Four weeks, $25.9 billion in contested penalties

The bill stacks. On October 21, New Mexico First Judicial District Judge Francis Mathew ordered Meta to pay $25 billion↗ after a jury found more than 43 million violations of the state's consumer protection law ³⁴. He found the law warranted more than $219 billion, then reduced the figure to $25 billion without explaining the calculation ³.

Meta slammed the ruling as a "tax" on freedom of expression ². New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez called it one of the largest, if not the largest, single-state verdicts against the company in American history, and state law directs the money to New Mexico's school system ⁴.

The appeal route has cut these bills before

Add Italy's $887 million and Meta is contesting $25.9 billion in four weeks, about 43 percent of the $60.5 billion it earned in 2025 on $201 billion of revenue ⁶. In four weeks, regulators have billed Meta more than it earns in five months.

Appeal is the established route. Italy's €1.1 billion competition fine on Amazon▼−1.16% — Amazon, down 1.16 percent today in 2021 came down to €752 million on appeal↗ ², and Meta's two biggest privacy bills to date, the Federal Trade Commission's $5 billion settlement in 2019 and Ireland's record €1.2 billion fine in 2023 under the GDPR, the European Union's privacy law, neither visibly slowed the business ³⁸.

Priced so far as noise

Gil Luria, head of technology research at D.A. Davidson, gives the market's answer: the company "is worth nearly two trillion dollars, and will likely continue to appeal these cases and drag them out," which makes the current set of cases "unlikely to cause a material impact to Meta's value" ⁴. The shares closed Friday up 2.15 percent ⁷, three weeks after the New Mexico order landed; Monday's open is the first session that can price Italy's number.

The probe did not cover AI training, a use Meta denies ¹; the Garante reserved a separate assessment of a 2026 feature that processes galleries in the cloud ¹. Meta's AI business, which now sells model access by the token, was left out of this probe and faces a separate one ¹. Two clocks now run for holders: Meta's appeals in two countries, and the Garante's 60-day order, which lands in mid-January ¹.