EU Set To Open Antitrust Probe Into Facebook's Classified Ads Business (cityam.com) 3
The EU is said to be on the brink of opening a formal antitrust investigation into Facebook following complaints from rivals about the platform's classified ads business. From a report: Regulators have already sent questions to Facebook and its competitors asking whether the social media site distorted the classified ads market by promoting its Marketplace services for free to its 2bn users. Facebook Marketplace, which launched in 2016, allows users to buy and sell goods to each other without fees. It is used by 800m Facebook users in 70 countries. The European Commission first started looking at the platform in 2019, asking companies whether they considered Marketplace as a close rival and how many visits to their sites came from ads placed on Facebook's platform. Classified ads rivals are said to have complained that Facebook used its market power to gain an advantage.
Craigslist (Score:1)
Re: Craigslist (Score:2)
For free...? (Score:2)
Ok, so if I can sell stuff to people on Facebook marketplace without paying some kind of fee then how is Facebook making any money off of this? I understand that using said service enables Facebook to target me with more refined ad choices, but if I'm actively looking to buy or sell something, usually I start searching for that on Google or Amazon or BestBuy, perhaps B&H for photo gear. Some people like Ebay or Etsy or Craigslist.
The internet is a crowded market with lots of competing choices for buying