By Edith Hancock
The European Commission fined Facebook-owner Meta 797.72 million euros ($842.8 million) on Thursday over allegations that the company illegally tied its Marketplace classified-ads platform to its flagship social network, undermining competition.
The commission said the U.S. tech company's practice of linking Marketplace to Facebook gives it a significant distribution advantage that competitors can't match.
The commission, the antitrust arm of the European Union, said that Meta was "unilaterally imposing unfair trading conditions on other online classified-ads service providers who advertise on Meta's platforms, in particular on its very popular social networks Facebook and Instagram," and effectively favoring its own service over competitors'.
Meta's terms allow it to leverage advertising data from those third parties to its own advantage, it said.
The penalty is the first antitrust fine for Meta for abusing its dominance in the social media landscape by the EU watchdog. The commission ordered Meta to sever the alleged tie and not roll out similar practices in future.
Meta said it would appeal the fine by the commission. It denied using competitors' data in a way that disadvantages competitors and said the company imposes safeguards to ensure that it doesn't.
"This decision ignores the realities of the thriving European market for online classified listing services," the company said.
EU officials first started investigating Meta in 2021.
The fine comes just as EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, well known in Brussels for her tough stance on Big Tech, is due to step down from her post in the coming weeks. The Commission opened a wave of probes into the world's largest technology companies during her time in office, fining Apple around $2 billion over how it treats music-streaming platforms like Spotify in its own App Store.
Write to Edith Hancock at edith.hancock@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 14, 2024 09:21 ET (14:21 GMT)
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