This is as they took aim at the United States company's newly introduced pay or consent advertising model, already the target of privacy regulators and activists' ire.

The tech giant launched the no-ads subscription service for Facebook and Instagram in Europe last November, saying users who consent to be tracked get a free service which is funded by advertising revenues. Or they could pay for an ad-free service.

The European Commission, which acts as the EU competition enforcer, said the binary choice breaches the bloc's Digital Markets Act which seeks to rein in the power of Big Tech, as it sent its preliminary finding to Meta.

It said the binary choice forces users to consent to the combination of their personal data and failed to provide them with a less personalised but equivalent version of Meta's social networks.

--Reuters--