To avoid more antitrust issues in the UK, Meta limits how it uses advertising data to boost Facebook Marketplace

Meta, Facebook's parent company, has given key assurances to UK antitrust regulators as it seeks to counter concerns about how it uses advertising data to benefit its own products.

The news comes the same week that Meta revealed it was selling GIF platform Giphy for $53 million three years after buying it for $400 million, following a divestiture order final issued by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) last October. The CMA also recently blocked Microsoft's $68.7 billion bid for Activision.

At the heart of this specific issue is how Meta is able to leverage data from its core social network to make decisions about displaying and recommending content on Facebook Marketplace, an online classifieds service launched in 2016 that allows Facebook users to buy and sell. almost everything. Since Meta may collect information about users' interests through their online advertising interactions on Facebook, the AMC argues that this gives Meta an unfair advantage by allowing it to display more relevant items in the Marketplace feed. of their users - at the expense of advertisers elsewhere on the platform.

The European Commission (EC) and the CMA announced separate but collaborative efforts to investigate Meta into the practice in June 2021, with the CMA revealing in August that it was conducting a formal investigation. The EC followed suit four months later.

Now, however, the CMA has given its first indication that it is ready to drop the case after receiving specific commitments from Meta.

This includes allowing advertisers to opt out of having their ad data used to grow Facebook Marketplace, which Meta said it would do by implementing "new technical systems." In addition to this, Meta said it will train its staff to ensure it does not use advertisers' data when developing new products for use in the UK market which could compete directly with advertisers. .

While the CMA has yet to explicitly agree to these commitments, it has more or less said it will, and that if it finally gets the go-ahead, a monitoring trustee will be appointed to ensure that Meta respects its commitments.< /p>

"Reducing the risk of Meta unfairly exploiting the data of companies that advertise on its platform for its own competitive advantage could help many UK companies that advertise on it," the director of the company wrote. CMA enforcement, Michael Grenfell, in a report released today. "We are currently consulting on these commitments which, at this stage, will address our concerns."

This latest announcement launches a month-long consultation period that will end on June 26th. If its preliminary findings are upheld, this will effectively end the investigation.