EU: Tying the free Facebook Marketplace to the social network undermines rivals.Meta has been fined nearly €800 million by Brussels after regulators accused Facebook’s parent company of stifling competition by “tying” its free Marketplace services with the social network.Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s outgoing competition chief, said on Thursday that by linking Facebook with its classified ads service Meta had “imposed unfair trading conditions” on other providers.She added: “It did so to benefit its own service Facebook Marketplace, thereby giving it advantages that [others] could not match. This is illegal.”Meta said it would appeal against the €797.72 million fine levied by regulators. “We built Marketplace in response to consumer demand—this decision ignores the market realities, and will only serve to protect incumbent marketplaces from competition.”It added: “The European Commission’s decision provides no evidence of competitive harm to rivals or any harm to consumers.”The EU’s long-running antitrust probe into Meta was launched in 2019 following accusations from rivals that the tech giant was abusing its dominant position by offering free services while profiting from data it collects on the platform.In December 2022, the European Commission issued initial charges against Facebook for allegedly using the data it gathered for free—mostly from businesses—to then sell ads to users.
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22 sats \ 0 replies \ @xz 3h
Oh yes Ebay was there first as a reseller platform (now source of tax revenue) and conduit for Chinese imports, rivaling Amazon's own. This left nowhere for local garage sales, Meta stepped in. Ebay must have been furious.
Sad that both the accusation of data harvesting and the rubuttal that there was no competition are both correct. No innovation due to over-regulation, and no government cared enough about the data for eight years.
Now the EU government wants something in return. I wonder why.
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11 sats \ 0 replies \ @anon 4h
What competition is there when EU rEgUlAtIoNs often hinder businesses before they can even enter the market? A money grab by an organization that is struggling with corruption and incompetence.
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68 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 6h
tldr Facebook marketplace was winning too hard so the EU was like "you're guilty of interfering with stagnation"
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11 sats \ 0 replies \ @TomK 6h
Interesting in this context is the number of big tech companies that grew under the rule of the Eurocraps: 0
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