The case hinges on how Meta receives legal permission from users to collect their data for personalized advertising. The company includes language in its terms of service agreement, the very lengthy statement that users must accept before accessing services like Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, that effectively means users must allow their data to be used for personalized ads or stop using Meta’s social media services altogether.
It was pretty clever of the EU to pass GDPR, as it provides them with a continuous revenue stream of fines from American companies, while being effectively impossible to comply with. I worked at a company that completely rewrote their policies and stack to comply and they still get hit with fines.
414M every five year is a pretty small revenue stream for a group of 27 countries. I'm pretty sure it's just supposed to be dissuasive.
a fine is a price
The rules are definitely not impossible to comply with. I'm not using third parties or collect data I don't need in the first place - trivial compliance.