EU fines Meta $840 million over abusive practices benefiting Facebook Marketplace

Brussels — 

The European Commission connected Thursday fined Meta Platforms $840.24 cardinal implicit abusive practices benefiting Facebook Marketplace, it said successful a statement, confirming an earlier study by Reuters.

"The European Commission has fined Meta ... for breaching EU antitrust rules by tying its online classified ads work Facebook Marketplace to its idiosyncratic societal web Facebook and by imposing unfair trading conditions connected different online classified ads work providers," the European Commission said.

Meta said it volition entreaty the decision, but successful the meantime, it volition comply and volition enactment rapidly and constructively to motorboat a solution which addresses the points raised.

The determination by the European Commission comes 2 years aft it accused the U.S. tech elephantine of giving its classified ads work Facebook Marketplace an unfair vantage by bundling the 2 services together.

The European Union opened ceremonial proceedings into imaginable anticompetitive behaviour of Facebook successful June, 2021, and successful December, 2022, raised concerns that Meta ties its ascendant societal web Facebook to its online classified advertisement services.

Facebook launched Marketplace successful 2016 and expanded into respective European countries a twelvemonth later.

The EU determination argues that Meta imposes Facebook Marketplace connected radical who usage Facebook successful an amerciable "tie" but Meta said that statement ignores the information that Facebook users tin take whether to prosecute with Marketplace, and galore bash not.

Meta said the Commission claimed that Marketplace had the imaginable to hinder the maturation of ample incumbent online marketplaces successful the EU but could not find immoderate grounds of harm to competitors.

Companies hazard fines of arsenic overmuch arsenic 10% of their planetary turnover for EU antitrust violations.