Caner ÜNVER/ANKARA – DHA
In the investigation of the Competition Board regarding the obligation to share data on WhatsApp users, administrative fines against the companies concerned and an end to the data merging were requested.
Competition committeeBy the decision of January 11, 2021 WhatsApp An ex officio investigation was launched against Meta Platform (Facebook), WhatsApp LLC and Madoka Turkey Bilişim Hizmetleri, in order to determine whether Article 6 of the ‘Law on the Protection of Competition’ No. 4054 was violated. In addition, the obligation to share WhatsApp data has been stopped. The Board listened to the verbal defenses of the company representatives within the scope of the investigation. Representatives of Meta and stakeholder companies and Competition Board experts attended the meeting chaired by the Chairman of the Board, Birol Küle. At the meeting opened by Birol Küle, the opinion of the investigation committee was read.
ADMINISTRATIVE FINE AND DATA COMBINATION REQUESTED TO END
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In the opinion of the delegation regarding the results of the examination findings, it was stated as follows:
“Facebook’s economic integrity is dominated by personal social networking services, consumer communication services and online display advertising services markets, with personal social networking services by combining data collected from Facebook’s core services called Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger services. In the online display advertising services markets, it causes the deterioration of competition by complicating the activities of its competitors and creating barriers to entry to the market, thus violating the 6th article of the Law No. In accordance with the provisions of the Articles of Association and ‘Regulation on Anti-Competitive Agreements, Concerted Actions and Decisions, and Fines for Abuse of Dominant Position’, it is necessary to impose an administrative fine, in order to end the violation and to ensure effective competition in the market, Facebook; Facebook, In Terminate the aggregation of the data to be collected from the Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger services and technically separate this data, limit the use of the data obtained under each core service to be usable only for the improvement of the relevant core service and the online advertising market offered under the same service, It has been concluded and concluded that the data obtained within the scope of a basic service should be stored in a separate database.
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After the delegation’s opinion was read, the board listened to the oral defenses of the company representatives. The decision on the investigation is expected to be announced within 15 days.
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