Turkey takes action against Meta over Data Sharing

Turkey’s competition authority which is a governing body to avoid monopolies in major industries, on Monday, imposed an interim safety measure on Meta Platforms Inc. meant to put an end to data sharing between the Instagram and Threads platforms in Turkey.

It is investigating a probable abuse of the company’s dominant market position to take information from threads to understand the users main interests and use it to promise user specific content on Instagram app.

In December 2023, the competition authority launched a very publicised investigation into Facebook parent Meta group to investigate the possible threat of stealing user information and a monopoly in the social media industry of Turkey.

The aforementioned investigation was over a possible violation of competition law by linking its social media platforms Instagram and the newer Threads to take over the industry and eliminate conpetintion in the nation.

The authority has stated the interim measure would stay in place until a final decision and a vote is made, since the data obtained and merged through these two could “violate competition law and cause irreparable damage” in the market, which seems to be the biggest concern for the authority.

Other investigations by Turkey on Meta 

Separately, the Turkish authority also fined Meta a hefty 4.8 million lira ($148,000) every single day as part of a separate investigation over a few notification messages that the company had sent to the users about the sharing of sensitive data.

The notification about data sharing between the company’s Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp apps and platforms did not provide sufficient and accurate information and was not sufficiently transparent, it stated.

The notification was also designed to guide users to approve data sharing between the sources, which was not deemed sufficient and enough to address anti-competition concerns that the authority has put on Meta.

A Meta spokesperson has said that the company is now considering the important decision and will have more to say in due time, major statement shave not been made by them yet and there seems to be no update from both the authority and Meta, users are puzzled