May 2024 – On 6 May, the Turkish Competition Authority (the “Authority”) issued its decision regarding META Platforms, Inc. (“META”). This decision finalises the interim measure order (“Interim Measure Order”) and imposes an administrative fine on META amounting to TRY 335,730,707.20 (approximately USD 10.4 million).
Background
On 18 March, the Authority announced the Interim Measure Order against META. This Interim Measure Order aimed to prevent irreparable harm during the investigation into allegations of aggregating the data of users who created “Threads” profiles based on their Instagram accounts by linking the Threads and Instagram applications without providing the users with a consent option.
The Authority included the following findings in this announcement:
- META has extensive and detailed data accumulation due to its long-standing presence in the market;
- the size and diversity of META's user base makes META services attractive to advertisers;
- this allowed META to allocate more resources for service development and made it more difficult for competitors to access advertisers and thus financial resources, and META's activities constituted an entry barrier in the market; and
- META operates as an ecosystem with its core services and related services, which enables META to transfer the strength and know-how gained from each service to another service and increases its market power.
In response to the Interim Measure Order, on 15 April, META announced that Threads would be temporarily closed for use in Turkey as of 29 April 2024 and will be opened after fullfilment of the requirements of Interim Measure Order.
Decision overview
On 6 May 2024, the Authority announced that the finalised Interim Measure Order imposing an administrative fine of TRY 335,730,707.20 (approx. USD 10.4 million).
The Authority also stated that they imposed the administrative fine based on the fine of TRY 4,796,152.96 (approximately USD 150,000) on the META’s 2022 gross revenues for each day starting from 20 February 2024 until the compliance measures proposed by META that would fulfil the requirements of the Interim Measure Order are introduced into the records of the Competition Authority. It was noted that META had previously submitted proposals to the Authority, which included practices previously introduced for European Union users in the form of "profile-free use", however, these proposals were not deemed sufficient to address concerns about data aggregation with the following grounds and were consequently rejected by the Authority at its meeting on March 14, 2024:
- requirement of an Instagram account to use Threads (active or inactive Instagram user account);
- continued data aggregation for people who are already using Threads with their existing profiles; and
- profile-free use causes lower service quality compared to profiled use and therefore users are forced to give consent to data aggregation by interfering with their will and directing them to profiled use.
Conclusion
In the petition dated 2 May 2024 submitted by META to the Authority, META stated that as of 30 April 2024, META had deactivated the profiles of all Threads users in Turkey and that Turkish users would not be able to use Threads as of that date.
As a result, the Authority ceased the daily administrative fine imposed on META and imposed a total administrative fine of TRY 335,730,707.20 (approximately USD 10.4 million) for the 70-day period from 20 February 2024 to 29 April 2024. The Authority also concluded that META's proposed remedies for suspending Threads operations in Turkey are sufficient to avoid the obligations set out in the Interim Measure Order, and therefore META is now in compliance.