Supervisor Elham AbolFateh
Editor in Chief Mohamed Wadie

Facebook's Business Begins to be Questioned in Europe


Sun 10 Feb 2019 | 03:37 PM
Yassmine Elsayed

By: Yassmine ElSayed

CAIRO, Feb. 10 (SEE) - Germany's antitrust office said that Facebook was abusing its market position by combining its data with information from Instagram, WhatsApp and third party websites.

In accordance, the regulator ordered Facebook to stop the practice in a ruling that experts say could shape the company's future — and potentially even lead to its breakup.

According to CNN,The fact, that the data issue was handled by an antitrust regulator rather than a privacy watchdog, could mark an important shift in the way authorities view social media.

Ioannis Lianos, a competition expert and professor at University College London, said that antitrust law has traditionally focused on whether companies use their size to exclude competition and increase prices.

"This case shows that in the digital economy, harms to consumers may not always take the form of higher prices or lack of innovation, but also lower privacy," he said.

Facebook built a massive advertising business on what it knows about its users. But could the company's enormous database soon become its biggest problem.