The European Commission has hit US tech giant Meta with a €797.72 million fine over alleged “abuse” of its dominant market position.
Brussels in particular objected to how Mark Zuckerberg’s company operated its Facebook Marketplace product.
Meta has combined its classified advertisements service with the rest of Facebook’s offerings as a social media platform. The Commission has now argued this bundling — in the way it has been currently implemented — has been illegal.
EU authorities also argued Meta has used Facebook to impose “unfair trading conditions” on its competitors. They did not offer more details about exactly how the California technology giant had done this.
“Meta tied its online classified ads service Facebook Marketplace to its personal social network Facebook and imposed unfair trading conditions on other online classified ads service providers,” outgoing EC competition tsar Margrethe Vestager said.
“It did so to benefit its own service Facebook Marketplace, thereby giving it advantages that other online classified ads service providers could not match,” she added.
Meta has rejected the Commission’s findings, publishing its own statement shortly after the EU’s press release vowing to appeal the decision.
“It is disappointing that the Commission has chosen to take regulatory action against a free and innovative service built to meet consumer demand, particularly when senior European political figures are calling for the EU to be more competitive, innovative and forward-thinking,” the company said.
The decision “argues that Meta could use advertising data from rival marketplaces that advertise on Facebook to compete against them with Facebook Marketplace. But we don’t use advertisers’ data for this purpose and we have already built systems and controls to ensure that,” said Meta.
“This decision ignores the realities of the thriving European market for online classified listing services and shields large incumbent companies from a new entrant, Facebook Marketplace, that meets consumer demand in innovative and convenient new ways,” it said.
“We will appeal this decision to ensure that consumers are well served in the EU,” Meta added.
Meta cannot charge European users for the privilege of not allowing the company to use their personal data, the EU has ruled. https://t.co/kvkUdwaiAS
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) July 3, 2024
