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Meta Fined $843M by EU over Marketplace Ads
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- malshe 2y agoGift URL: https://www.wsj.com/tech/eu-fines-meta-843-million-over-marketplace-classified-ads-b28ddb38?st=Rmuuiw&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink https://www.wsj.com/tech/eu-fines-meta-843-million-over-mark...
- cm2012 2y agoAnother classic case of European bureaucrats raiding the piggy jar of US tech companies. Like, obviously, marketplace is tied to Facebook the social network. It's how they authenticate sellers are real people and connect them to nearby people. It does a huge disservice to consumers to try to disconnect the two.
- EMIRELADERO 2y agoIf it was the legislature that explicitly made a law to fine Meta for this instead of a regulatory agency, would you then be ok with it?
- JohnMakin 2y ago> It does a huge disservice to consumers to try to disconnect the two. That isn't what is happening here. They are being fined for preferential treatment to their own service on their platform. That isn't the same thing as you're saying.
- aga98mtl 2y agoBut why would Facebook not have the right to show Facebook Marketplace on their own platform? Is Facebook not allowed to add features to their app? Is Facebook Group an unfair competitor to other online forums? Who decide what features are allowed?
- aurareturn 2y agoWhat do they mean by preferential treatment? The article does not state the detail.
- crazygringo 2y agoThis is what drives me nuts with so many of these EU antitrust articles lately. They're clear about the fine, but then it's all handwavy language about what a concrete violation even looks like. So it's impossible to even have an opinion because nobody even knows what we're actually talking about. Best I could gather from the article is that this has something to do with paid ads on Facebook and Instagram that link to Marketplace vs. paid ads that link to other similar services (like eBay I'm guessing?), and that there's something extra-special about the Marketplace ads that the eBay ads don't have. But what even is the special thing? And is the article even accurate on this? Because it also refers to Marketplace listings as "ads" so it's not easy to parse.
- ahmeneeroe-v2 2y agoWell yeah...the EU isn't just going to say "lol we're stealing money from the US". They are going to give themselves a fig leaf
- piltdownman 2y agoAnother classic case of US Tech Companies 'disrupting first, apologising later' by ignoring Consumer protection legislation when it suits their bottom line.
- aga98mtl 2y agoHow are consumer harmed by Facebook Marketplace appearing in Facebook?
- threeseed 2y agoThis has nothing to do with consumer protection. And anyway the EU never had specific legislation at the time Marketplace was introduced hence why they are having to use the EEA agreement as the basis for their actions. Which is basically a generic "do nothing bad" clause.
- piltdownman 2y agoIt has everything to do with Consumer protection. Meta tied its online classified ad business to its social network, automatically exposing Facebook users to Marketplace without any question of consent. It then exacerbated this by imposing unfair trading conditions with a terms of service that authorised the company to use ad-related data — generated from competitors who advertise on Facebook or Instagram — to benefit Marketplace. The reason the use EEA legislation is presumably because Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway are EEA but not EU states, but fall under scope here.
- xvector 2y ago> automatically exposing Facebook users to Marketplace without any question of consent. I simply cannot even comprehend the kind of entity/mind that sees this as an issue. How does the EU even get anything done? Think of the poor users! "Exposed" to Facebook Marketplace, oh the humanity! How evil of a company to link to their own services on their own website! We must regulate the links! This ridiculous mentality is why the EU has strangled its tech space to death, why it has missed out on trillions from the mobile era and will miss out on trillions from the AI era, why all of your best engineers come to the US, and why the EU has completely and utterly failed in consumer facing technology. The EU is more interested in hand wringing and manufactured moral panic than actually getting shit done. Marketplace in Facebook feeds? So what? Like, who gives a shit? The users certainly don't. It works, people like it, ship it, move on. God, what a suffocating bureaucracy.
- Ragnarork 2y agoUS Tech companies are completely free not to do business in Europe. That the US ignores some big antitrust issues doesn't mean Europe has to do the same. Here it deals with the fact that in that area Meta is both a platform provider and a player in said platform, and that they take advantage of the former to hamper competitors. I can't see how it's related to what you're suggesting.
- EGreg 2y agoI'm surprised the matter is being so widely reported. I would think the ads platform was ... classified :)
- mtnGoat 2y agoSeems similar to a lesson alphabet learned in the EU a while back.
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- beardyw 2y agoThe EU alleged ... well they were found guilty.
- karaterobot 2y agoWas it a criminal trial?
- beardyw 2y agoJust a comment on the partisan language used.
- true_religion 2y agoAlso Facebook doesn’t deny what they did. They just think it is unfair to fine them.
- karaterobot 2y agoIt's relevant, because the standard of evidence would be much higher if it's a criminal trial vs. if it's a commission deciding whether or not to hand out a fine, where they have sole authority to do so. Meta could still maintain that it has done nothing wrong, in which case the article is right (and correct) to use the word 'alleged', since that's not been disproven. If they'd said 'guilty', they could open themselves up to legal trouble. I know nothing about the facts of this situation, to be clear.
- ChrisArchitect 2y agoOfficial release: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_24_5801 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_24_...
- ApolloFortyNine 2y agoWhat they were found guilty of (was this even a trial?) seems like could apply to literally any business that participates in two markets. >Tying its online classified ads service Facebook Marketplace to its personal social network Facebook. This means that all Facebook users automatically have access and get regularly exposed to Facebook Marketplace whether they want it or not. You can accuse almost anything of that, it's like business 101. The European grocery store chains (aldi/lidl) tend to have a literal random shit aisle that exists to capitalize on this, and has for years. And I always hate laws that seemingly make everyone guilty, and are going to inevitably come down to selective enforcement.
- piltdownman 2y agoA retail store selling various kinds of retail goods and a Social Network embedding a Classified Ads service in their core offering are not remotely equivalent.
- crazygringo 2y agoNo, the social network with the classifieds service is much better. The reason it's so good is that it has real people's identities tied to the listings. That massively decreases issues around scams and safety. I want those things to be connected. I don't want regulations that make that illegal. That's the opposite of progress and consumer benefit.
- true_religion 2y agoOr they could just require ID for sales, just like every physical business who has to know who their so called marketplace partners are.
- threeseed 2y agoEU is becoming a very difficult place to do business. Marketplace was introduced in 2007, 15 years before the DMA set the guidance for the regulatory landscape. At the time there was no indiction that simply adding a popular and somewhat obvious feature would be seen as anti-competitive given that other classified ad platforms existed and were seemingly doing well. You have to wonder how many companies will be reluctant to bring new features to EU in the future.
- aurareturn 2y agoAgreed. It feels like Europe's DMA is basically just a taxation on big American tech companies. There is a very fine line between over regulation and enough regulation to maximize efficiency.
- EMIRELADERO 2y agoSo what would your opinion be if the US passed a similar law?
- betaby 2y agoLet's see then and discuss after?
- doublerabbit 2y ago> taxation on big American tech companies And that's a bad thing how?
- olliebrkr 2y agoTotally agree, it's not a bad thing. It's a large area of the world saying you do not dictate the rules.
- aurareturn 2y agoIt depends. Is the EU presenting itself as a bastion of free trade? I don't think so anymore. They're clearly protectionists with the recent actions against American big tech and Chinese EV companies.
- ahmeneeroe-v2 2y agoI wonder if the next administration will put a stop to this EU trade war against US Big Tech, or if they will let specific companies (e.g. Meta & Google) continue to suffer due to a (perceived or real) bias against that admin during their 2016-2020 tenure and their political campaigns. I imagine at the very least that the company formerly known as Twitter will be protected.
- aurareturn 2y agoWell, Tim Cook was talking to Trump about EU legal issues. Trump made public statements about it. One reason Meta and Google's stocks have not boomed after the election is they're seen as more liberal in Trump's circle.
- ahmeneeroe-v2 2y agoExactly what I was thinking. Apple is seen as neutral by Trump admin. X as an ally. And Meta/Google as enemies
- tossandthrow 2y agoThis is politics. The US act exactly the same way against EU companies: https://www.pharmavoice.com/news/ftc-request-novo-catalent-deal-ozempic-lilly/717243/ https://www.pharmavoice.com/news/ftc-request-novo-catalent-d...
- ahmeneeroe-v2 2y agoThat's kind of my point. This isn't "consumer protection", it's a shakedown of a US company by the EU. I think that the incoming US administration will seek to play politics more aggressively than the current admin.
- tossandthrow 2y agoProbably - or at least that is the rhetorics. However, it is not clear that this is not in balance already. The discussion thread seems to believe that the EU is being harsher to the US than the other way around.
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- ancorevard 2y agoWill future tech companies bother making their products available in the EU? Will it be worth it, or is just too big of a risk with uncertain outcomes?
- miohtama 2y agoFor Facebook for sure, as they are eating the lunch of local medias by being able to serve smaller advertisers with more targeted campaigns.
- Johanx64 2y agoExcept for VR headsets, I reject the notion that facebook/meta is a "tech" company.
- chung8123 2y agoThey have done a ton of advancement in AI. They also have to have the infrastructure to handle so many users. I feel like they fall squarely in the tech company world.
- zeroonetwothree 2y agoDo you think “tech” excludes software or something? That wouldn’t be a normal definition.
- Johanx64 2y agoDoes running a website automatically mean you are a "tech" company? Or does it become "tech" company just because you need to buy a whole lot of servers to store all the hoarded user data that later is sold out to advertisers? What's the exact number of servers where running a website becomes a "tech company"?
- philjohn 2y agoIt's a large market, and more profitable than APAC and RoW per user (just look at the Meta investor presentations which show that it's US, followed by the EU then APAC and RoW[1]). [1] https://s21.q4cdn.com/399680738/files/doc_financials/2024/q3/Earnings-Presentation-Q3-2024.pdf https://s21.q4cdn.com/399680738/files/doc_financials/2024/q3...
- dgroshev 2y agoI suspect the latter part is so commonplace that many technologists don't even think twice about it. > 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. This allows Meta to use ads-related data generated by other advertisers for the sole benefit of Facebook Marketplace. Consider this: - A local marketplace AcmeShop wants to advertise itself on Facebook, paying Facebook for ads. - The only practical way to do so requires AcmeShop to install Facebook's tracking on their website. The tracking is always dual purpose: on the one hand, it gives AcmeShop data on conversion from their ads (which is vital for AcmeShop), but on the other it also gives Facebook data about AcmeShop users. - Alice wants to buy a used 3D printer. She goes to AcmeShop, searches for 3D printers, checks a few listings out, but doesn't buy anything. - Alice opens Facebook. At this point, Facebook registered Alice's visit to AcmeShop 3D printer listings, so of course they serve ads for 3D printers selling on Facebook Marketplace. - Alice buys a used 3D printer from Facebook Marketplace, cutting AcmeShop out. AcmeShop has a tough choice: they either advertise on Facebook, pay Facebook, and help Facebook to undermine their own business, or they forgo Facebook as a marketing channel altogether. Usually different parts of this scenario are discussed in isolation (performance marketing, user tracking, privacy on Facebook, etc.), obscuring the larger picture. I don't see how Facebook's behaviour taken as a whole is anything but predatory and abusive of their position.
- olliebrkr 2y agoIt's 100% predatory. I hope we will see similar cases brought against Amazon soon (if they haven't been already). The fact that so many companies are dependent on selling on Amazon, yet Amazon also sells their own products, is ludicrous. - AcmeShop sells 3d printers and sell on Amazon - Amazon sees these printers are selling well - Amazon buys/creates their own 3d printer brand - Amazon gives their own products preferencial treatment and uses all it's data for how AcmeShop's printers are selling to undercut them in all markets - AcmeShop goes out of business because unaware consumers buy what, on the surface, is a better deal - With no competition Amazon increases it's prices to whatever it likes
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- olliebrkr 2y agoIt surprises me how many people here are against this decision, and expressing sentiment that this is bad for the EU tech scene. Meta has been fined because they employed tactics to undermine competition and persistently employ anti-competitive tactics. Why is it wrong for the EU to force companies to obey it's laws and act in the best interest of it's inhabitants? The companies being targeted are some of the biggest companies in the world and are accountable to almost no-one. Because they're a monopoly they're somehow exempt from the rulebook? C'mon. If anything this helps competitor businesses because it shows that the tech giants are not except for the law, and the EU will fight for competition. Something the US sorely lacks in many industries.
- aurareturn 2y agoMeta has been fined because they employed tactics to undermine competition and persistently employ anti-competitive tactics. What exactly did they do? The article is light on details. I think if you list them, maybe people will see your side more. I personally think there is a difference between what DMA laws says and what people think is fair.
- diogofranco 2y agoDo you live in the EU? From where I stand I mostly got cookie banners, can't get to Google maps or flights from Google search, get AI launches 6 months after the rest of the world if at all etc.. Not yet feeling all the consumer benefits
- sofixa 2y agoYour pictures weren't used to train AI models. Facebook can no longer create shadow profiles for people who aren't on it and thus can't consent. You can ask any company to tell you all they know about you, and delete it (with some small regulatory exceptions). You don't have 50 different chargers in your home. And a million other things.
- bko 2y ago> Your pictures weren't used to train AI models. This is almost certainly untrue. But if it gives you a piece of mind, so be it. > Facebook can no longer create shadow profiles for people who aren't on it. What impact does Facebook not having a ledger with my name on it have on my life? You still have ads and tracking in Europe, except now with cookie banners. > You can ask any company to tell you all they know about you, and delete it (with some small regulatory exceptions). Have you ever done this? > You don't have 50 different chargers in your home. I don't need anyone telling me what types of devices to buy. I prefer competition and can make up my own mind about chargers. Role of the state is not de-cluttering my home. I'd prefer Google Maps and free 2 day shipping to these. Not to mention $300k+ developer salaries compared to 55k a year. But I guess you don't have to check your emails after 5, so there's that.
- xvector 2y agoI hope big tech just leaves the EU and leaves them scrambling to replace large swaths of infrastructure while everything goes down.
- tossandthrow 2y agoI can tell you that a lot of the EU hope the same - at this point MS teams has become a meme of poor quality - but because of the MS monopoly, it is not possible to compete And because of the US' blatant lack of antitrust initiatives, probably because of the leverage it affords the US, everybody are forced this garbage upon them.
- xvector 2y ago> I can tell you that a lot of the EU hope the same This is because 99.99% of people in the EU have zero understanding of how heavily reliant they are on American big tech under the hood. Nearly every piece of technology or every running service in the EU relies on it. I guarantee you most EU citizens don't want YouTube, Google Maps, Google Search, everything running on AWS/Azure/GCP, everything reliant on Intel/Nvidia IP, etc taken away from them. > blatant lack of antitrust initiatives The fact of the matter is that the EU model does not work. If we adopted it, we'd be 20 years behind in tech, as evidenced by the sheer stagnation in the EU. The EU is great at academic research and has absolutely shot itself in the foot when it comes to industrializing any of it in the tech space. Your best engineers and companies often simply move here after they get sick of being underpaid or hamstrung.
- tossandthrow 2y agoYou are completely right - whenever you sidestep free market principles a nation can get ahead. Just like China constantly do it. This works until it doesn't anymore.
- xvector 2y agoHow is overregulation a "free market principle?"
- vondur 2y agoShould be interesting going forward once the Trump administration takes over. I'd imagine they aren't going to be happy with all of anti-American tech fines being levied.
- zeroonetwothree 2y agoI miss when antitrust regulations were focused on preventing harm to consumers, rather than competitors. Clearly marketplace is a net benefit to consumers, hence its popularity. If you’ve ever used it compared to any of the other unauthenticated marketplaces it would be obvious why.
- tossandthrow 2y agoThe key here is that harm to competition _is_ harm to the consumer in the sense that you spend more for less.