Facebook’s Hunger For Your Data: Network Effects in the FCO Decision
March 11, 2019
The Bundeskartellamt (Federal Cartel Office – “FCO”) ruled that Facebook abused its dominant position as a social network in Germany by imposing exploitative business terms on its counterparties, Facebook users. The terms highlighted by the FCO allow Facebook to collect and combine data from non-Facebook services such as Facebook’s subsidiaries WhatsApp and Instagram, and from non-owned third-party sites.
The case is ground-breaking because it is the first to establish an infringement of competition law rules because practices were in conflict with data protection principles. In the CPI EU news article Dechert’s Competition team reviews the network effects identified by the FCO and considers the potential for the case to gain traction outside Germany.
Read the full article here: Facebook’s Hunger For Your Data: Network Effects in the FCO Decision.
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