It’s time to make data classified information
Facebook owner Meta Platforms was on the receiving end of a €792 million fine this week, when the European Commission accused it of stifling competition by “tying” its free Marketplace services with the social network.
The Commission said the outfit had broken competition law by embedding Facebook Marketplace inside its social network, meaning alternative classified ad services faced “unfair trading conditions” that made it harder for them to compete.
Meta has said it will contest the ruling, but what I find interesting is that the fine, and the scrap over it, reveals the true nature of the Internet magic money tree.
While it is undoubtedly coincidental, Zuckerberg and Co have been attempting to deliver their own slaps to the EU. By offering paid subscriptions to EU users who do not want to be tracked and squeezed for data, Meta has met “EU regulator demands” and gone “beyond what’s required by EU law”. But it has done so through gritted teeth.
The EU’s regulations threaten the “entire European business community”, Meta warned in a press release.
Unusually for a press release, which are typically best fed directly into the shredder, it is worth reading in full. In it, Meta points out that personalised ads “boost revenues for companies that show ads on our platforms”, which is akin to saying water is wet, but has the virtue of at least laying bare the war being waged for data. Your data.
Meta goes on to take a swipe at one of its competitors, Apple, which made a – far too small – move in favour of users by facilitating the easier blocking of the gaping data maw hiding behind every smartphone app:
“Similar to when Apple’s changes to App Tracking Transparency made it more difficult for small businesses to reach their customers, regulators making it more difficult and costly for companies to reach people will not deliver the economic growth that European stakeholders have called for”.
Cry me a river.
It is one of life’s unacknowledged ironies that much of the Internet industry’s bloated profits are built on what amounts to classified advertising, hitherto a rather unglamorous business.
Consider how Google actually makes money, for instance. This partially, though not entirely, a matter of scale: scooping up the largest possible audience makes selling adverts for a couple pennies into big business, but it increasingly demands data so that the tat in question can be shoved in the faces of anyone likely to pay for it.
When giant corporations huff and puff and even hint that they could pull out of Europe if the continent does not dismantle its laws and rebuild itself in the image of the increasingly plutocratic US, the best answer we can give is: go right ahead.
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