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The British competition authority continues to call Meta Facebook
Photo: DADO RUVIC / REUTERS
The Internet group Meta, which includes Facebook and Instagram, is to resell the start-up Giphy, which offers stickers and GIFs (short films) to illustrate and comment on messages.
That was ordered by the British competition authority CMA (Competition and Markets Authority) on Tuesday.
This would "protect millions of users of social media and promote competition and innovations in online advertising," said the agency.
Meta, which was then still called Facebook, announced the acquisition of Giphy for $ 400 million in May 2020.
Giphy has been around since 2013, and the company states that its corporate goal is to »make communication more fun«.
The competition authority criticizes, among other things, that Meta makes access to Giphy difficult for other platforms or denies them entirely. As a result, more users would be directed to the services belonging to Meta, Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram. In any case, the three offers mentioned would already account for 73 percent of the time British users spend on social media. In addition, the authority fears that Meta could change Giphy's terms of use in such a way that apps like TikTok, Twitter and Snapchat have to transmit more user data in order to be allowed to use Giphy.
The CMA had only fined Meta - at that time under the name Facebook - at the end of October of 50.5 million pounds (around 60 million euros) because the US group had refused to provide information requested about the takeover of Giphy.
With this, the authority wanted to stop the "integration process" of the two companies, according to its own information.
The social network Facebook accounts for over 50 percent of the UK online advertising market.
Meta criticizes the authority's decision as "unfair" and is considering to appeal, said a company spokesman in an initial reaction.
mak / AFP
