Meta Fined $843M by EU over Marketplace Ads

Consumers win when there is continued competition. Short term, sure, consumers get a better printer, but once Amazon has taken over the market where is the drive to make anything better or cheaper? It's competition 101..

I think a lot of American's have lost trust in AT&T, Time Warner Cable, but it doesn't meant they're not forced to use them.

If you control the pipes you should not be allowed to also sell the water in those pipes. You will always be in a far greater position to take advantage and become a monopoly, which, is well documented, hurts consumers.

Aww... have you ever heard about price dumping to kill the competition? Kindle would be a good example here :D

None of this makes any sense.

Facebook Marketplace is a marketplace. They don't control the products that are being advertised. All they can control is the weighting of ads they run on certain products e.g. "AirPods are popular, increase ad spend to 20% of total".

But they could do this by simply optimising for ROAS just like every other company does.

If Facebook is sharing AcmeShop data with Marketplace, and it's a very big if, it would still be of almost no value.

I'm still not following.

Facebook isn't setting prices on Marketplace -- sellers like you and me are. We're not getting any data from AcmeShop.

When you say "Yes, it's a better deal on the face of it", I don't know what "deal" you're talking about.

But I see "remarketing" ads everywhere. Google does it too.

How is Facebook showing remarketing ads for items on Facebook Marketplace, the ads paid for by a Marketplace seller who is boosting their item, any different from Google showing remarketing ads for items on eBay, paid for by an eBay seller?

Because that same thing would be happening if AcmeShop were using Google Analytics. Or if Alice had just done a Google search, which might be how she found AcmeShop in the first place.

Or are you arguing against remarketing ads entirely?

I guess I'm just having a hard time seeing any harm here because Alice visited AcmeShop first and didn't buy anything. Like, if I run a shop stall that sells frobulators, and I see someone pass by a nearby stall that also sells frobulators, and they browse but don't buy one, and after they leave I wave to them, and they buy one from me because I have the exact model they wanted... I don't see anything illegal or immoral at all. The first store already had their chance! If Alice liked their items, she would have already bought from there, or gone back there when she was ready to buy.

Does 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"?

GP forgot this narrative where breaking laws enables technological progress and innovation.

And should the EU then compell SAP to retaliate in kind? You can argue the EU is more a serv than an ally to the US, but they still need them on their side.

The number of times you can pull a Nordstream are preciously limited.

Please, do it :D

> Except the change the EU is trying to encourage with this ruling is really absurdly dumb. It's clearly and transparently rent seeking.

No it's not. It's as any other regulation that tries to prevent overusing ones power.

No, 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.

Facebook already has ads, this is just another kind of ad.

See how it comes entirely down to interpretation?

> 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.

This is a ridiculous take. Of course Google should be allowed to link to Google Maps from their homepage and search. I have never seen this level of adoration for ridiculous overregulation.

This is the reason the EU has stagnated and will continue to stagnate indefinitely. There is simply no culture of getting shit done, it's all about hand wringing.

lack of regulation ≠ morals :shrug:

Also Facebook doesn’t deny what they did. They just think it is unfair to fine them.

It'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.

This 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.

It 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.

Probably - 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.

Shakedown? It's the fucking law, either these companies follow it if they want to do business or they get punished.

I understand that the US justice system has a very porous concept of who has to follow the law or not but that's not how it should work.

but you can become an economic super power by avoiding tax smaller companies pay?

You 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.

Let's see then and discuss after?

Totally agree, it's not a bad thing. It's a large area of the world saying you do not dictate the rules.

It 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.

They employ a bunch of the smartest people in the world - who all probably want to do legal stuff. I am sure they can figure out what to do to follow the law in the jurisdictions they work in.

This is not what the issue is about. The problem is that Meta is giving preference to their own ads over third party ads, not that the platforms reference one another.

If Zuck is to be believed, he's not about making life harder for competitors, he's about competing vigorously.

If you leverage your business, and data obtained for other reasons, to unfairly depress competition, the end user loses out, and is part of why antitrust legislation exists.

Another example is what Amazon were accused of - using their internal data from providing seller services to then decide which products to launch in their Amazon Basics range - to the point where it makes those other products no longer profitable to sell, and an option for consumers is removed.

If they conducted research without using that data about what products people would like, that's different - that's competing vigorously and fairly.

Making life harder for your competitors is fine. Doing so through illegal practices isn't.

If you want to operate as a marketplace, the EU denotes certain practices and standards for doing so. Don't like them? Don't operate as such.