Meta’s AI Power Grab: Why Europe should be worried

Meta - the U.S. tech giant behind Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, recently flipped the switch on its new AI assistant for Europe. With characteristically minimal fanfare, Mark Zuckerberg’s company announced plans to train its AI on Europeans’ own posts and interactions. In late March 2025, Meta revealed it will start feeding „publicly available content“ from European users into its AI models (theverge.com). This includes anything adults (humans over the age of eighteen) post publicly on Facebook or Instagram - photos, statuses, comments - and, as it’s a common practice with most models, not only Meta’s, the conversations you have with the Meta chatbot itself.  Private WhatsApp chats or messages to friends are, get this, supposedly excluded, and Meta says it won’t scrape posts by minors. Still, the move represents a sweeping data grab. Europeans are given a brief chance to opt out by May 26, 2025.

In other words, act now, or your digital life on these platforms becomes AI fodder.

An American Tech Giant Defining „Good AI“ for Europe

From a European perspective, this development sets off alarm bells, and rightly so. Why should a private American company get to define what „good AI“ looks für millions of EU citizens? Meta’s rollout of its AI assistant across its platforms means the company’s values, biases, and commercial goals could be baked into an omnipresent algorithmic helper that Europeans will increasingly  rely on. Not only that. Think of all the hateful content in form of reels, comments, or posts by political/religious radicalists. There’s a lot of that stuff on these platforms. And we know how this can go wrong, we’ve already seen it with Microsoft’s Tay, a chatbot that was supposed to learn from interacting with humans on Twitter in 2016. Do i need to explain how that went?

Tay began to post inflammatory and sexually aggressive as well as racist stuff shortly after launch. It was shut down only 16 hours later.  Let’s see how it goes with Meta AI. At we’ve made extensive progress in the training of AI, so such incidents should be a thing of the past. Still. Meta sees a lot of good in training their model on user data. Meta claims this is all to better serve users – to make AI outputs more culturally sensitive, understanding “dialects, colloquialisms, hyper-local knowledge and humor” across Europe. In a blog post, the company even spoke grandly of its “responsibility” to develop AI for Europeans (zdf.de). But many in Europe find such promises cold comfort, given Meta’s track record. It’s not just about localized jokes – it’s about power: the power to shape information flows, content moderation, and now personal assistance via AI, all according to a corporate agenda based in Menlo Park, California.

The concern deepens when considering Meta’s political entanglements in the U.S. The company has had strong associations with Donald Trump and his circle, raising questions about what agenda its technology ultimately serves. In fact, Meta’s top lobbyists haven’t hesitated to leverage U.S. political muscle against European policies. When the EU fined Meta under its new Digital Markets Act in 2025, Meta’s policy chief Joel Kaplan blasted Brussels for “attempting to handicap successful American businesses while allowing Chinese and European companies to operate under different standards”. The message was clear: Meta views EU regulations as unfair obstacles – and found a sympathetic ear in Washington. President Trump (now in his second term) promptly labeled the EU’s penalties “a novel form of economic extortion” that the U.S. “will not tolerate”. Meta has effectively signaled that if European regulators get too uppity about tech governance, it will call in help from its friends in the White House.

Indeed, Mark Zuckerberg himself has cozied up to Trump as the political winds shifted. In late 2024, the Meta CEO even dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago to mend fences, with one Trump aide noting that Zuckerberg “wants to support the national renewal of America under Trump’s leadership”. This about-face – from banning Trump on Facebook after the January 6 riots to breaking bread with him once he regained power – speaks volumes. For Europeans, it reinforces a troubling notion: Meta’s leadership will align with whichever political forces best protect its empire, even those whose values clash with Europe’s. Allowing such a company to dominate AI services used daily by Europeans could mean importing American culture-war biases, privacy laissez-faire attitudes, and profit-driven definitions of “good AI” onto the European digital landscape. The risk is that Europe’s budding AI ecosystem and its regulations get undermined by Meta’s influence before they even have a chance to flourish independently.

The Illusion of User Control over personal data

Meta knows its plan is controversial – hence the eleventh-hour opt-out offer to EU users. But calling it user “control” would be generous. The reality is that Europeans have limited say in how their data is used on Meta’s platforms, even now. To avoid having your Facebook or Instagram posts absorbed into Meta’s AI, you must find and submit a special objection form for each service. Meta insists this process is easy – users will supposedly get in-app notices with a link to a form – but in practice the forms are well hidden in submenus. It’s almost as if Meta doesn’t really want you to opt out. And the clock is ticking: the company gave a mere few weeks’ notice. Germany’s consumer protection center warned users that by May 27, Meta will commence training – so objections should be filed by May 26 at the latest.

Even if you do manage to opt out, your control remains deeply limited. In the fine print of its opt-out form, Meta quietly admits that it “may still process information about you to develop and improve AI” even if you object or don’t use their services at all.  Wait – even if you don’t use Meta’s platforms? That’s right. For example, if a friend publicly uploads a photo of you or tags you in a public post, that content can still be swept into Meta’s training dataset. Your refusal doesn’t bind your friends, and Meta’s algorithms cast a wide net. In short, users can only prevent Meta from using the data they themselves post – not data about them posted by others. And once your data is absorbed into the AI, try to get it out of there. The system will forever remember that photo of you at the pub or that comment you left on a public page, incorporating it into who-knows-what AI model. This is effectively a point of no return for your data. Such asymmetric control – where Meta holds all the cards – makes a mockery of the idea that users truly own their personal information on these platforms.

The limited opt-out also highlights a deeper problem: Meta is doing this on an opt-out basis in the first place, rather than asking permission. Under Europe’s GDPR privacy law, using personal data typically requires explicit consent or a clear legal necessity. Meta is trying to squeeze this AI training under the umbrella of “legitimate interest” – a legal basis that allows data use without consent if a company can justify it. The Irish Data Protection Commission forced Meta to pause its plans last year after complaints by privacy advocates (such as NOYB, None of Your Business, led by Max Schrems). Meta was none too pleased. It begrudgingly halted training in 2024 at the Irish regulator’s request, even publicly whining that losing access to Europeans’ data would hinder its AI’s understanding of “what’s happening on social media”. Now, with a green light from a December 2024 European Data Protection Board opinion and a hastily arranged opt-out process, Meta is barreling forward again. From a user standpoint, this feels like a fait accompli: a giant corporation setting the terms, and individuals scrambling to limit the damage.

When your personal life becomes AI training data

Meta’s gambit is part of a broader ethical issue: the exploitation of personal data to train artificial intelligence models. For years, tech giants have treated the internet – including our photos, posts, and chats – as a free buffet for AI training. Facebook posts of your newborn in 2010? Vacation pictures from 2015? All fair game to a company eager to build smarter algorithms. In fact, Meta has already admitted that it used practically everything users have shared publicly since 2007 to train AI models. That stunning revelation (buried in a report last year) suggests that even before Europeans heard a peep about Meta’s AI, much of their content had quietly been digested by the company’s machine learning systems. Now Meta wants to make this data grab official in Europe going forward – and retroactively legalize what it likely was doing under the radar.

This raises thorny questions of privacy and trust. Europeans might well ask: When I posted a status update for my friends in 2009, did I ever imagine it would one day be used to train a global AI? As independent privacy researcher Lukasz Olejnik puts it, “posts or photos we posted 2 or 10 years ago – did we expect it to be used to train AI in 2025?” (theregister.com). Almost certainly not. Such repurposing of data seems to clash with the fundamental principle of purpose limitation in data protection law – the idea that personal data collected for one purpose (say, social networking) shouldn’t be arbitrarily used for another (feeding an AI) without fresh consent. Olejnik notes this creates a “tricky” duality: if you explicitly give data to an AI assistant, fine, maybe that’s fair use; but scooping up general platform content for AI is another matter theregister.com. Users “definitely did not expect” their old selfies and comments to end up influencing an algorithm’s responses years later. 

The ethical stakes go beyond individual surprise. There’s a collective dimension: Meta is not just building a personalized tool for you alone; it’s building a commercial AI system that will serve millions – and enrich Meta’s bottom line – by leveraging our combined personal data. Consider what it means that a private company can appropriate the digital traces of our lives (our likes, our posts, our social connections) to create a product, without paying us or truly asking our permission. At its core, this is a form of exploitation of personal and social information. Europeans have been sensitized to data abuses in recent years – from the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which saw Facebook user data misused for political propaganda, to the proliferation of surveillance capitalism. Meta’s AI project rings similar alarm bells. It’s as if Meta views the personal data of Europeans as an all-you-can-eat buffet for its AI ambitions, and only after regulators prod it does the company begrudgingly offer a napkin to those who want to leave the table.

Europe’s Call to Action: Regulate and innovate - fast.

Legislation is slow; Big Tech moves fast. By the time the AI Act or similar regulations come into force, companies like Meta may have already locked in their dominance and normalized their data-hungry practices. That’s why public debate can’t wait. Europeans must ask: Do we want our social media and messaging spaces – the digital public square – to be governed by the opaque algorithms of an American mega-corporation? If not, what is the alternative?

One alternative is to build and support home-grown, public-interest AI services that don’t rely on siphoning personal data as fuel. European society should invest in its own digital infrastructure that respects privacy and democratic values by design. This could mean anything from EU-backed research into privacy-preserving AI, to promoting open-source social networks, to stricter enforcement that forces Big Tech to open up their walled gardens. Competition is part of the answer: if Meta faces a viable alternative that people trust, it might be compelled to behave better. Regulation, too, must have teeth and urgency. Privacy law experts point out that existing laws (like GDPR) already empower regulators to limit what Meta is doing – if they choose to enforce them strongly. The European Data Protection Board’s December opinion tried to reconcile AI development with privacy rights, insisting that innovation be “done ethically, safely, and in a way that benefits everyone,” with personal data protected “in full respect of the GDPR”.

Notably, Europe’s tech regulators have shown some backbone in other areas – the EU recently fined Meta hundreds of millions under competition rules despite vocal objections from Trump and U.S. officials reuters.com reuters.com. This indicates that Brussels can act in the European interest even under geopolitical pressure. A similar resolve is needed on AI and data usage: clear limits on how companies can exploit personal data, requirements for transparency in AI systems, and hefty penalties for abuses.
Ultimately, this is about who gets to shape the digital future. Europe has a chance to assert that its values – privacy, autonomy, transparency, diversity – should guide the development of AI, rather than the growth-at-all-costs mentality of a Silicon Valley titan. The fact that Meta’s AI will be omnipresent on the very platforms where Europeans socialize and get information makes this a matter of societal importance. It’s not just a private product feature; it’s potentially a new layer of algorithmic influence over discourse and behavior. Such power should not rest unchecked in the hands of a company with a history of prioritizing engagement and profit over users’ well-being, and whose leadership is willing to curry favor with the likes of Donald Trump if it serves their aims.

In the coming months, Europeans need to have a frank and open public conversation about Meta’s AI rollout. Citizens should demand to know how their data is being used and insist on real choices – not dark-pattern opt-outs and PR spin. Lawmakers and regulators, on their part, must move beyond abstract AI ethics talk and confront the very concrete challenge at hand: a U.S. tech giant is effectively setting de facto standards for AI in Europe through market power, and that may undermine European rights and interests. The silver lining is that this controversy could galvanize Europeans to push for a different path – one where AI innovation doesn’t come at the expense of personal autonomy and where public interest trumps Big Tech’s interests. Europe invented strict data privacy laws and reined in Big Tech before; it can do so again in the age of AI, but the hour is getting late. The question is whether Europe will seize this moment to demand better – or wake up to find that “good AI” has been privately defined for them, one Facebook post at a time.

Sources: The controversy around Meta AI’s data training plans has been widely reported. Key insights were drawn from a ZDFheute report by Kevin Schubert detailing how Europeans can object to Meta’s data use zdf.de zdf.de. Analysis of Meta’s approach and its clash with EU privacy norms comes from tech journalism outlets The Verge theverge.com and The Register theregister.com, which highlighted Meta’s already extensive use of user data and the legal gray areas. Comments from experts like Lukasz Olejnik provide perspective on the ethical implications theregister.com. Information on Meta’s political alignment and response to EU regulation was referenced from Reuters reuters.com reuters.com and CBS News cbsnews.com.