[ad_1]
It seems that the anti-competitive intimidation tactics of Facebook could finally come back to bite the social media giant.
Quoting sources close to the case, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday that Facebook's former and current rivals were discussing with the Federal Trade Commission the company's practice of capturing its competition (for example, Instagram) or creating products intended to help the little ones. as in the past with competitors who rejected Facebook's acquisition offers. Snapchat is one of these competitors.
According to the report, Snap's legal team spent years gathering evidence that Facebook was engaging in anti-competitive behavior. Nicknamed "Voldemort Project", the documents allege that Instagram has effectively prevented users from connecting to their Snapchat profile in their bios on Instagram, owned by Facebook, suggesting in some cases that influencers lose their verification badge.
Snap executives also suspected that Instagram was preventing Snapchat's content from tracking trends on the platform and removing tagged posts and Snap-related searches, the Journal reported. Hit by e-mail, a spokesman for Snap rejected Gizmodo's request for comment about the report.
The Journal quoted people close to the case as saying that FTC officials had recently contacted "dozens of technical managers and application developers" as part of its investigation into antitrust violations by Facebook. In addition to talking with people related to Facebook's current and past competitors, the Journal announced that investigators from the agency are also studying Onavo, the VPN service acquired by Facebook in 2013, which was then prompted to close its doors earlier this year. used to suck loads of data boats on the use of the user application, among other information.
Last year, internal charts and documentation indicated that all the data collected by Facebook on the use of applications through Onavo had helped to inform the decision of the technology giant of To buy WhatsApp after realizing that the messaging application posed a potential threat. As the Review had previously reported in 2017, Facebook was using Onavo to monitor how people used snapchats, including with metrics indicating the number of snaps they were sending per day.
Facebook did not immediately return a request for comment on the report.
Facebook is currently conducting numerous investigations into potential antitrust violations. Earlier this month, New York State Attorney General Letitia James announced that she was conducting a bipartite investigation on Facebook about potentially anti-competitive behavior.
"Even the largest social media platform in the world must respect the law and respect consumers. I am proud to lead a coalition of bipartisan attorneys general to determine if Facebook has stifled competition and put users at risk, "said James at the time. "We will use all the survey tools at our disposal to determine whether Facebook's actions may have endangered consumer data, reduced the quality of consumer choice, or increased the price of advertising."
[ad_2]
Source link