The European Commission (EC) intends to investigate Facebook, the EC said in a statement.
“The European Commission has launched a formal antitrust investigation to assess whether Facebook has violated EU competition rules by using advertising data collected, in particular from advertisers, in order to compete with them in markets where Facebook is active”, – the document says.
The European Commission will also assess the link between the online ads service Facebook Marketplace and the social network Facebook, which may violate EU competition rules. European Commissioner for Competition and Development of the Digital Economy Margrethe Vestager noted that this social network is used by “almost 3 billion people every month, a total of almost 7 million companies advertise there”.
“Facebook collects huge amounts of data about the activities of users of its social network and beyond, which allows it to target specific groups of customers. We’ll take a closer look at whether this data gives Facebook an undue competitive advantage, including in the online classifieds sector, where people buy and sell products every day, and where Facebook also competes with the companies from which it collects data”, – Vestager said.