Turkiye: Closure of Competition Authority investigation into Meta concerning violation of the Competition Protection Law

On 23 November 2024, the Turkish Competition Authority concluded its investigation into Meta and its alleged abuse of its dominant position by linking the Threads and Instagram applications. The Authority accepted Meta's commitments to address concerns raised in the investigation related to data integration practices between Threads and Instagram. These commitments stated that moving forward, Turkish users can create a Threads account without requiring a separate Instagram account. Furthermore, unless users choose to merge their accounts, data collected via Threads will not be combined with Instagram data. The Competition Authority had previously found Meta in violation of Law No. 4054 on the Protection of Competition, based on the allegation that Meta was merging user data from Instagram accounts into Threads profiles without providing users with an option to consent. Consequently, Threads' operations in Turkey were officially suspended as of 29 April 2024, and the Competition Authority fined Meta TRY 335'730’707 million.