The EU Commission fines tech giant Meta for practices favoring Facebook Marketplace that it said violated EU competition law.
The EU has fined US tech firm Meta for practices favoring Facebook MarketplaceImage: Jens Büttner/dpa/picture alliance
The EU Commission on Thursday fined US tech giant Meta €797.7 million ($840.2 million) for breaches of EU competition law.
The body said that Meta had engaged in practices benefiting Facebook Marketplace.
Besides the Facebook social media platform, Meta also owns Instagram and the WhatsApp messaging service.
“The European Commission has fined Meta … for breaching EU antitrust rules by tying its online classified ads service Facebook Marketplace to its personal social network Facebook and by imposing unfair trading conditions on other online classified ads service providers,” the European Commission said.
The Commission said that Facebook Marketplace enjoyed a “substantial distribution advantage which competitors cannot match” due to it being tied to the social media platform.
“All Facebook users automatically have access and get regularly exposed to Facebook Marketplace whether they want it or not,” it said.
It said that Meta imposed unfair conditions on competitors who chose to advertise on Facebook Instagram, allowing it to “use ads-related data generated by other advertisers for the sole benefit of Facebook Marketplace.”
The penalty comes two years after the Commission accused Meta of giving its classified ads service Facebook Marketplace an unfair advantage by tying it to the Facebook social network.
Meta launched Facebook Marketplace in 2016 and expanded into several European countries a year later.
