In response to the competition concerns raised by UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) in 2021, Meta has offered to not use other businesses' advertising data for improving its Facebook Marketplace service, CMA announced on May 26. Facebook Marketplace is an online classified ad service that allows users to post or browse items for sale. In June 2021, CMA launched an investigation into this service because it suspected that Meta was taking advantage of ad data from businesses using its advertising services to improve its own products in competition with the advertising customers. As one of the largest suppliers of ad space, Meta has an extensive trove of data on customer preferences that it can use to further its own interests. "For example, data derived from users’ engagement with ads on Facebook could provide Meta with knowledge as to whether a user is interested in a particular product such as trainers, which could then in turn feed into a decision to show listings for shoes to that same user when it opens the Facebook Marketplace tab." — UK CMA The European Union (EU) is also investigating Facebook Marketplace and has sent its Statement of Objections to Meta. What are the commitments offered by Meta? Limit the use of ad data: Meta will limit the use of ad data it collects through digital display advertising and business tool services. "This includes Meta taking steps to ensure that employees working on product development do not use such data to develop and improve…
