Europe’s antitrust enforcers have fined Meta €798 million ($839 million) for tying Facebook Marketplace to Facebook itself.

The European Commission said that automatically showing the marketplace to the social network’s users massively disadvantaged other classified-ad providers.



It also said Meta had imposed “unfair trading conditions” on those other classified-ad providers when they advertise on Facebook and Ins, allowing Meta to “use ads-related data generated by other advertisers for the sole benefit of Facebook Marketplace.”

Meta, which has never had to pay an EU antitrust fine before, will appeal. It claims there’s “no evidence of competitive harm.”



The European Commission levied¹ the punishment after years of investigations² into the tying of Marketplace to Facebook accounts and unfair trading conditions on competing online classified ad services.



In short, the Commission objects to the way Facebook users are exposed to Marketplace ads "whether they want [them] or not" due to the integration³ of Marketplace into the Facebook platform. It also criticizes Meta's ability to leverage⁴ its extensive advertising⁵ network "to use ads-related data generated by other advertisers for the sole benefit of Facebook Marketplace."