Meta Agrees To Restrict Advertising Data Use For Facebook Marketplace In UK

CMA Law Enforcement Executive Director, Michael Grenfell. (photo: Doc. gov.uk)

JAKARTA - On Friday, May 26 the United Kingdom's competition supervisory agency, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), announced that social media giant Meta Platform Inc., has offered to limit its use of other business ad data for Facebook Marketplace services to address competition concerns from regulators.

The CMA expressed its tendency to accept these commitments, which include options for advertisers to refuse the use of their data to improve Facebook Marketplace's classification advertising platform.

"Reducing Meta's risk of leveraging advertising business data on its platform for its own competitive gain could help many businesses in the UK advertise there," said CMA Law Enforcement Executive Director Michael Grenfell.

"We are currently conducting consultations on these commitments that we believe, at this stage, will address our concerns," he added.

CMA cites a Meta example that can use data obtained from user interactions with ads on Facebook to derive user interest in sports shoes, which can then affect the appearance of shoe ads on Facebook Marketplace for these users.

The consultation on Meta's proposal will be closed on June 26, the CMA said.