Turkiye: Issued ruling in Competition Authority investigation into Meta concerning violation of the Competition Protection Law

On 6 May 2024, the Turkish Competition Authority issued its final ruling regarding Meta and its alleged abuse of its dominant position by linking the Threads and Instagram applications. The Competition Authority previously imposed temporary measures on 8 February 2024 due to concerns about merging user data from Instagram accounts into Threads profiles without user consent. The decision highlighted Meta's extensive data accumulation due to its long-standing presence in the market, leading to concerns about market dominance and impeding competitors' access to advertisers and financial resources. Despite Meta's proposals for "profile-less usage" to comply with the temporary measures, these were deemed insufficient to alleviate data merging concerns. Consequently, Threads' operations in Turkey were officially suspended as of 29 April 2024, with Meta stating that Threads would resume once compliance with the temporary measures was achieved. However, on 30 April 2024, Meta disabled all Threads profiles for Turkish users, leading to the Competition Authority's decision to terminate the daily administrative fine imposed on Meta and impose a total administrative fine of TRY 335'730’707 million.