Meta Offers To Limit Use of Ad Data To Address UK Competition Concerns

Britain's competition watchdog on Friday said social media giant Meta had offered to limit its use of other businesses' advertising data for its Facebook Marketplace service to address the regulator's competition concerns. From a report: The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said it was minded to accept the commitments, which include advertisers being able to opt out of allowing their data to be used to improve the Facebook Marketplace classified ads platform. CMA executive director of enforcement Michael Grenfell said: "Reducing the risk of Meta unfairly exploiting the data of businesses who advertise on its platform for its own competitive advantage could help many UK businesses who advertise there. We are now consulting on these commitments which we believe, at this stage, will address our concerns."

Meta speaks with forked tongue

[RotateLeftByte]

Who will monitor that they are keeping to that agreement?
I would not trust Meta as far as I could throw Zuck down a greasy slope.

Re:

[raburton]

Exactly this.

Didn't they promise not to share WhatApp data with Facebook to please regulators previously? Only to then do just that.

Re:

[Luckyo]

This is a risk-reward assessment.

So the easiest way to monitor this is to make an exceptionally high fine + part of that fine goes to whistleblower who blew the whistle on it. Want to become set for life and your kids and grandkids set for life? Be an insider and blow the whistle.

And awareness of this risk will keep overwhelming majority of companies very, very honest on these sort of subjects, where deployed codebase is wide reaching and traceable.

I Solemnly Swear I'm Up to No Good

[El Fantasmo]

Why do regulators/governments allow companies to do these sorts of things? Here's what I mean:

Company is faced with regulation or some such.

Company offers to give government about 10% of what government wants with a self-governing/enforced non-binding agreement.

Government accepts non-binding agreement.

Company violates non-binding agreement.

Repeat process.

Re:

[VeryFluffyBunny]

Yep. This. What we'd like companies to do isn't as important as what we'll do when they fail to comply. Voluntary restrictions are just that. There's no consequence if they every decide that they don't want to do it anymore, "Oh, oopsie! Did we break our promise?" You can be sure this is what they're telling their shareholders.

Meta sells data and that's not legal in the EU...

[PubJeezy]

Meta's only profit-center is selling user data and that's not legal in the EU. All their products are designed to generate large amounts of invasive personal data and then sell it. They do not have any other viable business so why is this even a question? If stealing and selling user data is illegal, then Meta is a criminal organization. There's absolutely nothing for regulators to negotiate about...

Re:

[HiThere]

Well, the UK isn't in the EU, and they've announced plans to get rid of all those irritating restrictions. (I don't think they've officially done it yet, though.)

Does anybody believe they'll stop using this data?

[Miles_O'Toole]

When somebody tells you who they are, listen. Famous Zuckerburg quote: "They trust me. Dumb fucks."

They all gotta stop collecting data

[evanh]

As everyone is noting, they won't ever stop using what they're collecting.

Re:

[evanh]

Just like uncle Sam won't ever stop pilfering the collections as well.