Category Archives: Meta

Commission Fines Meta €797.72 Million Over Abusive Practices



The European Commission has fined Meta €797.72 million for breaching EU antitrust rules by tying its online classified ads service Facebook Marketplace to its personal social network Facebook and by imposing unfair trading conditions on other online classified ads service providers.

The Commission’s investigation found that Meta is dominant in the market for personal social networks, which is at least European Economic Area (‘EEA’) wide, as well as in the national markets for online display advertising on social media.

In particular, the Commission found that Meta abused its dominant positions in breach of Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (‘TFEU’) by:

Tying its online classified ads service Facebook Marketplace to its personal network Facebook. This means that all Facebook users automatically have access to get regularly exposed to Facebook Marketplace whether they want it or not. 

The Commission found that competitors of Facebook Marketplace may be foreclosed as the tie gives Facebook Marketplace may be foreclosed as the tie gives Facebook Marketplace a substantial distribution advantage which competitors cannot match.

Unilaterally imposing unfair trading conditions on other online classified ads services providers who advertise on Meta’s platforms, in particular on it’s very popular social networks Facebook and Instagram. This allows Meta to use ads-related data generated by other advertisers for the sole benefit of Facebook Marketplace.

The Commission has ordered Meta to bring the conduit effectively to an end, and to refrain from repeating the infringement or from adopting practices with an equivalent object or effect in the future.

Meta posted: Our response to the European Commission’s Decision on Facebook Marketplace

Today, the European Commission announced a decision claiming that Facebook Marketplace has hindered completion for online marketplaces in Europe. This decision ignores the realities of the thriving European market for online classified listing services and shields large incumbent companies from a new entrant, Facebook Marketplace, that meets consumer demand in innovative and convenient new ways. We will appeal this decision to ensure that consumers are well served in the EU.

Engadget reported: The executive arm of the European Union isn’t shying away from slapping major tech companies with hefty fines. The European Commission has fined Meta €797.72 ($842 million) for violating antitrust regulations.

The EC found that third-party classified ads serves that advertised on the likes of Facebook and Instagram were subject to unfair trading conditions. “This allows Meta to use ads-related data generated by other advertisers for the sole benefit of Facebook Marketplace,” regulators contended.

In my opinion, it appears that Meta is going to have to face the European Commission’s decision on the €797.72 million.


Meta Will Face Antitrust Trial Over Instagram, WhatsApp Acquisitions



Facebook owner Meta Platforms must face trial in a U.S. Federal Trade Commission lawsuit seeking its break-up over claims that it bought Instagram and WhatsApp to crush emerging competition in social media, a judge in Washington ruled on Wednesday, Reuters reported.

Judge James Boasberg largely defined Meta’s motion to end the case filed against Facebook in 2020, during the Trump administration, alleging that the company acted illegally to maintain its social network monopoly.

Meta, then known as Facebook, overpaid for Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2024 to eliminate nascent threats instead of competing on its own mobile ecosystem, the FTC claims.

Boasberg let that claim stand, but dismissed the FTC’s allegation that Facebook bolstered its dominance by restricting third-party app developers’ access to the platform unless they agreed not to compete with its core services.

“We are convinced that the evidence at trial will show that the acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp have been good for competition and consumers,” a Meta spokesperson said on Wednesday.

FTC spokesperson Douglas Farrar said that the case filed during the Trump administration and refined under Biden “represents a bipartisan effort to curtail Meta’s monopoly power and restore competition to ensure freedom and innovation in the social media ecosystem.”

The Verge reported Meta must face the Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust lawsuit that accuses the company from dominating the social media industry through its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp, a DC District Court Judge ruled on Wednesday.

The FTC filed a lawsuit against Meta in 2020, alleging the company bought up rivals — Instagram and WhatsApp — in an attempt to stifle competition. Judge James Boasberg initially dismissed the FTC’s lawsuit in 2021, but the agency filed an amended complaint, which he ultimately let proceed.

Meta once again asked the court to dismiss the FTC’s case in April. Boasberg has now ruled largely in favor of the FTC, though he dismissed a claim that Meta acted anticompetitively by preventing developers from accessing its API unless they agree not to compete with its apps.

The Hill reported a federal district judge ruled on Wednesday that Meta must face trial in an antitrust case brought by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over the social media giant’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp.

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg in a one-page order denied Meta’s request to drop the FTC case, though the judge did dismiss one portion of the lawsuit, and said he would hold a hearing later this month to discuss a trial date.

A full opinion explaining the judge’s reasoning was not publicly available at of Wednesday morning. Boasberg said it would be made public later in the day after the parties redact confidential business information.

In my opinion, it seems strange that this lawsuit took so long to end up in court. It feels as though the judge is going to hold Meta accountable for their acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp.


Meta Plans To Ask Facebook And Instagram Users In Europe If They Want Ads



Meta Platforms plans to give European users of Instagram and Facebook the option of receiving what it says are “less personalized ads,” a concession to regulators that risks hitting the company’s revenue in one of its largest markets, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The social-media company plans in coming days to begin prompting users in Europe with the choice of the new ad format, without paying a fee, according to people briefed on the plans.

The less-personalized format will show European users what Meta calls contextual ads based on content that a user sees during a given browsing session, rather than a user’s broader activity history, like the ads most users now see peppered into their feeds and stories on Meta’s apps. 

Some of the new ads — which will also be targeted based on age, gender and location — will cover the whole screen and be unskippable for a few seconds.

Meta’s new ad option comes amid pressure from European Union regulators who say users should have access to a free version of the company’s apps with less-personalized ads. It is unclear if the new concessions will satisfy EU regulators.

Meta posted: Facebook and Instagram to Offer Subscription for No Ads In Europe

Today, we are announcing important changes to Facebook and Instagram in the EU, including reducing the price of subscription for no ads by 40%. Going forward, people based in the EU will still have the option to chose between subscribing for an ad-free experience or continuing to access our services for free.

For those people who choose to continue using our services for free, they’ll now also be able to choose to see less personalized ads. However, we remain committed to personalized advertising, which will also way be the cornerstone of a free and inclusive internet.

Significantly lowering the price of Subscriptions for no ads

From tomorrow, we will reduce the price of the monthly subscription from €9.99 to €5.99/month on the web, or from €12.99 to €7.99/month on iOS and Android. Each additional Facebook or Instagram account will be charged at €4/month on the web and €5/month on iOS and Android.

While our previous price was fairly in line with peers, this lower pricing means that our subscription service will be one of the cheapest across our peers. Existing subscribers do not need to take any action – the price they pay will be automatically reduced…

Reuters reported Meta Platforms plans to offer Instagram and Facebook users in Europe the option to receive “less personalized ads,” the tech giant announced on Tuesday, in an effort to allay regulators’ mounting concerns.

Over the coming week, people in the EU who use the company’s social media platforms for free with ads will be able to choose to see ads based on what Meta calls “context” – content that a user sees during a particular session on the platforms.

In my opinion, I think that people in the EU who currently use Facebook and/or Instagram are not going to be happy about having ads pop up while they are trying to have a conversation with their loved ones.


Meta Builds AI Search Engine To Cut Google, Bing Reliance



Meta Platforms is working on an artificial intelligence-based search engine as it looks to reduce dependance on Alphabet’s Google and Microsoft’s Bing, the Information reported on Monday, Reuters reported.

The AI search engine segment is heating up with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, Google and Microsoft all vying for dominance in the rapidly evolving market.

Meta’s web crawler will provide conversational answers to users about current events on Meta AI, the company’s chatbot on WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook, according to the report, which cited a person involved with the strategy.

The Facebook-owner currently relies on Google and Bing search engines to give users answers on news, stocks and sports.

Meta did not immediately respond to a Reuters request from comment.

Google is aggressively integrating its latest and most powerful AI model, Gemini, into core products like Search, aiming to deliver more conversational and intuitive search experiences.

Open AI relies on its largest investor, Microsoft, for web access to answer topical queries, using its Bing search engine.

Engadget reported: Stung from the hit it took from an Apple privacy feature three years ago, Meta is reportedly looking to decrease its dependence on Google and Microsoft. The Information said on Monday that Meta is developing a search engine for its chatbot. The company also partnered with Reuters to help its AI answer news-related questions.

Meta has reportedly been working on indexing the web for at least eight months. The company’s goal is said to be to integrate the indexes into Meta AI, giving the chatbot an alternative to Google Search and Microsoft Bing.

Meta publicly disclosed its web crawler tech this summer, only saying it was for “training AI models or improving products” without stating outright that it was building a search backend. Senior engineering manager Xueyuan Su is reportedly leading the search engine project.

Tom’s Guide reported: In an effort to stay competitive in AI development, Meta is reportedly creating its own search engine. The move, reported by The Information, is intended to reduce dependence on Google and Microsoft Bing, which currently feed Meta AI with news, sports and stocks. According to a Meta insider, this initiative could serve as a backup in case the partnerships with the tech giants shift.

Led by senior engineering manager Xueyuan Su, over the last year, Meta has been quietly advancing its web-crawling and indexing technologies by gathering web data into searchable indexes. The ultimate aim is for Meta AI to deliver live, conversational answers, enabling the platform to address user questions without reliance on any outside search platform.

In my opinion, it is good that Meta is trying to shed its reliance on Google and Microsoft Bing for research. That said, I am hoping that Meta does not choose to scrape data from its users.

 


Oversight Board Says Meta’s Handling Of Satirical Image Is Concerning



Two weeks before the U.S. presidential election, the Oversight Board says it has “serious concerns” about Meta’s content moderation systems in “electoral contexts,” and that the company risks the “excessive removal of political speech” when it over-enforces its rules. The admonishment came as the board weighed in on a case involving a satirical image of Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, Engadget reported.

Meta originally removed the post, shared on Facebook in August, that showed an edited version of a movie poster from Dumb and Dumber. The original 1994 movie poster shows the two main characters grabbing each other’s nipples through their shirts. In the altered version, the actor’s faces were replaced by Harris and Walz.

According to the Oversight Board, Meta cited its bullying and harassment rules, which includes a provision barring “derogatory sexualized photoshops or drawings.” The social network later restored the post after it drew attention from the Oversight Board, and the company acknowledged the satirical image didn’t break its rules because it didn’t depict sexual activity.

The Oversight Board posted the following:

In August 2024, a Facebook user posted an altered picture on the poster for the 1994 comedy film “Dumb and Dumber.” In the altered image, the faces of the actors are replaced with the U.S. presidential candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris, and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. 

As in the original poster, the two figures are grabbing each other’s nipples through their clothing. The content was posted with a caption that included the emoji 🤷‍♂️🖕🖕. Meta initially removed the user’s post from Facebook under its Bullying and Harassment Community Standard, which prohibits “derogatory sexualized photoshop or drawings.”

After the user appealed Meta’s decision to remove their content to the Board, the Board brought this case to the company’s attention. Meta then determined its removal was incorrect, restoring the post to Facebook.

The Washington Times reported Meta’s Oversight Board rebuked the tech giant Wednesday after the company removed a satirical post depicting Vice President Kamala Harris and Tim Walz as the duo from the film “Dumb and Dumber.”

The Oversight Board, which operates independently from Meta, ruled that the company acted rashly by removing the post writing that it was obviously a political parody.

“This post is nothing more than a commonplace satirical image of prominent politicians and is instantly recognizable as such,” the board ruled.

Meta’s justification for taking down the post was that it violated the platform’s rule against derogatory sexualized photoshops. The rule is intended to target deep-fake pornography of non consenting parties. Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, restored the image once it was informed that the Oversight board would investigate the incident.

In my opinion, this satirical image of Vice President Kamala Harris and Tim Walz was created by someone who clearly didn’t like either one of them. The movie “Dumb and Dumber” was released in 1994, which indicates the age of the person who posted this on Facebook.

 

 


Meta Is Laying Off Employees At WhatsApp, Instagram And More



Meta has begun laying off employees across various departments, including WhatsApp, Instagram, and Reality Labs, according to people familiar with the matter. Rather than a mass, companywide layoff, these smaller cuts seem to coincide with reorganizations of specific teams, The Verge reported.

Some Meta employees have started posting that they’ve been laid off. Among them is Jan Manchun Wong, who gained notoriety for reporting on unannounced features coming to apps before joining the Threads team in 2023.

“Today, a few teams at Meta are making changes to ensure resources are aligned with their long-term strategic goals and location strategy, company spokesperson Dave Arnold said in a statement shared with The Verge. “This includes moving some teams to different locations and moving some employees to different roles. In situations like this when a role is eliminated, we work hard to find other opportunities for impacted employees.”

The Guardian reported Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, has reportedly fired about 24 staff at its Los Angeles offices for using their $25 (£19) meal credits to buy items such as toothpaste, laundry detergent, and wine glasses.

The tech firm, which is worth £1.2tn and also owns the messaging platform WhatsApp, is said to have dismissed workers last week after an investigation discovered staff had been abusing the system, including sending food home when they were not in the office.

That included one unnamed worker on a $400,000 salary, who said they had used their meal credits to buy household goods and groceries such as toothpaste and tea.

The worker admitted the breach when approached as part of a human resources investigation into the practice and was later fired. “It was almost surreal that this was happening,” the person wrote, according to the Financial Times, which first reported the story.

Some employees were also found to have spent the credits on other household items, such as acne pads. Employees who had only occasionally broken the rules were reprimanded, but were able to keep their jobs, the newspaper reported.

Free food has long been one of the perks for working for large tech companies.

CNN reported Meta fired around two dozen employees from its Los Angeles office for misusing company meal credits for things like laundry detergent, wine glasses, and acne treatment pads, a source familiar with the company confirmed to CNN.

Many of the social media giant’s corporate offices feature elaborate food services to provide employees with meals as a perk. Meta’s two-year-old office near New York City’s Penn Station, for example, features a cafeteria that feels like an upscale food court, with various stalls all free for staff.

But for employees at smaller offices without food services, the company provides meal vouchers — $20 for breakfast and $25 each for lunch and dinner — so they can have food delivered to the office while on the job.

The meal vouchers are meant for employees to eat while working at the office — sometimes long hours stretching across several meals of the day, notorious in the tech world.

In my opinion, it’s great that a company as large as Meta is offering food vouchers for its workers. Clearly, Meta is not thrilled about workers using the vouchers to buy household items, and is laying people off for doing so. 

 


Meta Fined $102 Million For Storing Passwords In Plain Text



The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) has slapped Meta with a $101.5 million (€91 million) fine after wrapping up an investigation into a security breach in 2019, wherein the company mistakingly stored users’ passwords in plain text, Engadget reported.

Meta’s original announcement only talked about how it found some user passwords stored in plain text on its servers in January of that year. But a month later, it updated its announcement to reveal that millions of Instagram passwords were also stored in easily readable format.

While Meta didn’t say how many accounts were affected, a senior employee told Krebs on Security back then that the incident involved up to 600 million passwords. Some of the passwords had been stored in easily readable format in he company’s servers since 2012. They were also reportedly searchable by over 20,000 Facebook employees, though the DPC has clarified in its decision that they were at least not made available to external parties.

Reuters reported the lead European Union privacy regulator fined social media giant Meta 91 million euros ($101.5 million) on Friday for inadvertently storing some users’ passwords without protection or encryption.

The inquiry was opened five years ago after Meta notified Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) that it had stored some passwords in ‘plaintext’. Meta publicly acknowledged the incident at the time and the DPC said the passwords were not made available to external parties.

“It is widely accepted that user passwords should not be stored in plaintext, considering the risks of abuse that arise from persons accessing such data,” Irish DPC Deputy Commissioner Graham Doyle said in a statement.

A Meta spokesperson said the company took immediate action to fix the error after identifying it during a security review in 2019, and that there is no evidence the passwords were abused or accessed improperly.

ArsTechnica reported officials in Ireland have fined Meta $101 million for storing hundreds of millions of user passwords in plaintext and making them broadly available to company employees.

Meta disclosed the lapse in early 2019. The company said that apps for connecting to various Meta-owned social networks had logged user passwords in plaintext and stored them in a database that had been searched by roughly 2,000 company engineers, who collectively queried the stash more than 9 million times.

Meta officials said at the time that the error was found during a routine security review of the company’s internal network data storage practices. They went on to say that they uncovered no evidence of anyone internally improperly accessed the passcodes or that the passcodes were ever accessible to people outside of the company.

Despite those assurances, the disclosure exposed a major security failure on the part of Meta. For more than three decades, best practices across just about every industry hav been to cryptographically hash passwords. Hashing is a term that applies to the practice of passing passwords through a one-way cryptographic algorithm that assigns a long string of characters that’s unique for each unique input of plaintext.

In my opinion, it sounds as though Meta wasn’t interested in having this information be reported on. It makes no sense for a company like Meta to hide what they were doing with customer’s passwords.