The European Commission reportedly said today that it has issued a “Statement of Objections” to Facebook’s parent company Meta, saying that Meta may be distorting competition in the online classified ads market and abusing its dominant position in the market, in violation of EU antitrust laws.
In a preliminary assessment statement, the European Commission said, “We take issue with Meta’s bundling of its online classified advertising service, Facebook Marketplace, with its social network Facebook. In addition, we are concerned that Meta has imposed unfair trading conditions on Facebook Marketplace’s competitors for reasons of self-interest.”
At the same time, the European Commission also stressed that this statement of objections does not represent the final outcome of the investigation. If Meta is ultimately found to have violated the law, it could be fined up to 10% of its annual global turnover.
At the end of last month, Meta was just fined 265 million euros (about 1.961 billion yuan, or $277 million) by the EU, mainly because hundreds of millions of Facebook users’ personal information was leaked to the Internet.
