Meta to Appeal Against $831 Million EU Antitrust Fine

Meta says it will fight a $831 million fine levied against the tech giant by the European Union.

A company spokesperson told Bloomberg News on Wednesday (Jan. 29) that Meta was appealing the fine. The penalty came after the EU alleged that Meta was tapping into user data to give its Facebook Marketplace service an unfair advantage.

As the Bloomberg report noted, the appeal escalates Meta’s ongoing conflict with the EU over its Big Tech crackdown.

It also follows President Donald Trump’s recent comments that EU fines are “a form of taxation” on American companies, a sentiment shared by Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg.

The European Commission (EC), which is the EU’s enforcement body, announced the fine in November, saying its investigation had determined that Meta gave its online classified ads service a significant advantage over its competitors by automatically offering the users of its social network access to it, regardless of whether they want.

In addition, the EC found that Meta imposed unfair trading conditions on other online classified ads services who advertise on its platforms, allowing it to use data generated by their ads to benefit Facebook Marketplace, the release said.

“This is illegal under EU antitrust rules,” Margrethe Vestager, the EC’s then-executive vice president in charge of competition policy, said at the time. “Meta must now stop this behaviour.”

Meta said at the time it would appeal the fine while also complying with it and addressing the points raised by the EC. The company added that the decision offers no evidence of harm to competitors or consumers and ignores the fact that there are several successful online marketplaces in the EU. Meta also contends that Facebook users can choose whether or not to engage with Facebook Marketplace.

“The reality is that people use Facebook Marketplace because they want to, not because they have to,” Meta said in its response to the decision.

Facebook Marketplace has also come under regulatory pressure in other jurisdictions, with the company settling an investigation with the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority after agreeing to a series of concessions.