France spanks Google $170M, Facebook $68M over cookie consent dark patterns

(Techcrunch) Chalk another one up for decentralized enforcement: France’s data protection watchdog has slapped headline-grabbing fines on Facebook and Google for failing to respect local (and pan-EU) cookie consent rules.

Today, the CNIL said it’s fined Google €150M (~$170M) and Facebook €60M (~$68M) for breaching French law, following investigations of how they present tracking choices to users of google.fr, youtube.com and facebook.com.

The regulator said it was acting after receiving a number of complaints.

In a clear breach of EU and French law, it found the pair do not offer an option for users to reject non-essential cookies as easily as the option they offer for them to accept all tracking.

Read more here.

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