Meta convinces German antitrust to close its proceedings

The German competition authority, the Bundeskartellamt, announced on 10 October 2024 that it had ended its proceedings against Meta, which adopted a series of measures in return. “Our 2019 decision on Facebook (now known as Meta, editor’s note) can be considered an innovation. Thanks to our decision, Meta has made very important changes to the way it manages user datasaid Andreas Mundt, Chairman of the Authority.

Merge data to access Facebook

In February 2019, the Bundeskartellamt prohibited Meta from combining personal data of users of its services from different sources without their consent. At that time, it was only possible to use Facebook if the social network was allowed to collect data from third-party websites and link this data to the respective Facebook accounts. The German authorities had banned these terms of use and decided that data collection could only take place with the user’s explicit consent, which could not be a condition for using Facebook.

The American company appealed this decision, especially before the Court of Justice of the European Union, which ruled in favor of the German authority. In a ruling on 4 July 2023, it ruled that the Competition Authority can find a breach of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) when examining abuse of a dominant position.

(…)