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Facebook?s merger of messaging apps and anti-trust implications, explained


TNW
Facebook Facebook
WhatsApp
Whatsapp
New York Times
users’
Facebook Research
Reuters
GDPR
EU


Vishwam Sankaran
Mark Zuckerberg’s
Bundeskartellamt
Mike Isaac
Andreas Mundt
Katarina Barley
Facebook
YouTube
Apple's
Boris


German
European


Europe

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Instagram
Germany
gadgets?First
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The New York Times
SOURCE: https://thenextweb.com/facebook/2019/02/08/why-germany-wants-to-block-facebooks-messenger-instagram-whatsapp-merger/
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Summary

That’s huge because it could open up many more avenues for the company to profile users and allow advertisers to target them across platforms.A Facebook spokesperson noted in the report that the merger would deliver a messaging service that was “fast, simple, reliable, and private.” Naturally, this raised concerns about the move’s impact on people’s privacy.With the platforms sharing a base of 2.6 billion users, the move could have wide-ranging impacts for people on the web across the globe for years to come. Due to this, the regulatory agency found that the social networking platform “violates mandatory European data protection principles.”“We are mostly concerned about the collection of data outside Facebook’s social network and the merging of this data into a user’s Facebook account,” said Bundeskartellamt president Andreas Mundt. We need to be rigorous in tackling the abuse of power that comes with data,” she said.Facebook, in turn, responded yesterday saying it disagreed with Bundeskartellamt’s conclusions and that they “intend to appeal so that people in Germany continue to benefit fully from all our services.”The Zuckerberg express retorted that Facebook’s “popularity is not dominance.” It noted that the cartel office’s report ignored the competition the social networking platform faced directly from Twitter, Snapchat, YouTube and other platforms. Using information across our services also helps us protect people’s safety and security, including, for example, identifying abusive behavior and disabling accounts tied to terrorism, child exploitation and election interference across both Facebook and Instagram.In the note, Facebook also said that it was making efforts to improve the privacy experiences for its users – including a poll for users to choose the kinds of ads they see, and a new Clear History tool that lets people see the information received from the websites and services who use Facebook’s business tools.

As said here by Vishwam Sankaran