The European Commission considers that Facebook's parent company, Meta, abuses its dominant position in the online classifieds market. According to Brussels, the company founded by Mark Zuckerberg favors its social network for the use it makes of its customers' data.
According to the investigation, announced last June, the fact that the social network and the classifieds service, the Facebook Marketplace platform, are linked gives Meta a "distribution advantage" that "competitors cannot match". . In addition, the commission considers that the company imposes "unjustified, disproportionate and unnecessary" conditions on competitors to offer services on their platforms.
The preliminary conclusions of the investigation will not result in a fine for the technology company, since this Monday it has only been notified of the charges of which it is accused and now Meta will have to respond to the community executive. If the accusations are confirmed, the company would be infringing European regulations that prohibit the abuse of a dominant position in the market. The penalty could be up to 10% of the company's annual worldwide turnover.
"We are concerned that Meta has imposed unfair trading conditions, allowing it to use data in competing online classifieds services," said Community Executive Vice President for Competition Margrthe Vestager. Specifically, the investigations suggest that Meta abused its dominant position in two main ways: first, through the way in which Facebook users automatically access the Marketplace classifieds platform, which leaves other competitors in disadvantage; and second, because it would be unilaterally imposing unfair commercial conditions on competing online classifieds services that advertise on Facebook or Instagram, also owned by Meta.
Community Services is concerned that the terms and conditions authorizing Meta to use ad-related data derived from competitors for the benefit of Facebook Marketplace are "unjustified, disproportionate, and unnecessary" for the provision of display advertising services on Meta's platforms. .
