The German Federal Cartel Office (FCO) claims that Meta is linking its VR headsets to its social accounts – the change in direction the company announced in August when it began rolling out Meta accounts and Meta Horizon profiles, saying that these accounts can be used to login. their VR products instead of logging into Facebook and Instagram (while allowing users to choose the latter option).
However, despite receiving a concession from Meta, the Bundeskartellamt has not stopped investigating its VR products. The company said today that it wants to keep a close eye on how the tech giant presents these account choices to VR users – so it’s revisiting the type of choice architecture (and/or dark mode) that Meta is rolling out – and said it’s monitoring how Meta Recommended combine user data in different services.
This is especially interesting because German regulators hope to enforce official data sharing between Meta VR offerings and other social services in the near future.
But judging by today’s comments, he managed to extract a temporary partial separation.
The background here is that FCO has a separate issue with what Meta calls “super-analysis” of users, which is how the company collects usage data from different services and associates it with a single user ID to refine more detailed profiles. For ad targeting purposes – The German Competition Authority considers this privacy-hostile surveillance-based business model offensive and has been trying to stop it since early 2019.
Meta has challenged the FCO’s stay order in an appeals process – it is now awaiting a decision from the EU’s highest court, which could be made next year, to either overturn or reverse the blocking order.
The Bundeskartellamt’s press release today states that the extent to which “such data processing is permitted” is “subject to local discussion” between it and Meta, including as a result of the aforementioned pending litigation before the European Court of Justice.
“Until this matter is clarified, and subject to certain exceptions, Meta will use a separate Meta account to store data generated by users while using the Meta Quest headset, separate from data collected from other Meta services,” added FCO.
Back in December 2020, a competition watchdog in Germany launched a separate investigation into Meta’s plans to link a Facebook account to Oculus (then the name of the company and its VR business), saying it was concerned about linking access to its virtual reality offerings. associated with social media may constitute a prohibited abuse of dominance.
It’s probably no coincidence that Meta’s decision to reverse course and roll out separate accounts for its VR users comes just months after the FCO completed yet another process confirming that the tech giant is under a special anti-competitive abuse regime. The 2021 update to comply with German law means Meta will face tighter antitrust scrutiny from the FCO over the next five years. (The meta has not challenged this designation.)
Regarding VR, the FCO wrote that Meta “expressed interest in a Facebook/Oculus friendly solution” – before continuing to roll out Meta Accounts in late August 2022 – which it noted “allow users to use VR. without Facebook or Instagram. Account for Quest 2 and Quest Pro headsets”.
“The Bundeskartellamt has made it clear that during the headset setup process, the user should be given the most free and unhindered decision as to whether to use the headset alone or in combination with other metaservices,” the FCO continued, implying that it is pressuring Meta to force it change their suggestions to eliminate manipulative nudges.
“With appropriate amendments, especially in terms of user dialogue, the Quest 2 and Quest Pro headsets are expected to be available soon in Germany,” the company added.
The EU’s preliminary competition reforms, the Digital Markets Act (DMA), will come into force in the EU next year. The meta, which imposes up-front commitments on the internet’s most powerful “gatekeeper” giants, is a likely candidate for a role called DMA that runs the platform’s core services and imposes further restrictions on how it operates to promote competition and fairness. As a result, the operational loop of the Meta-Empire in Europe continues to tighten.
“The digital ecosystem created by Meta has a huge user base, making the company a major player in social media. Meta is also a major player in the growing virtual reality market. If only Facebook or Instagram users could use virtual reality headsets, these two are competing in this area can be seriously hampered.Meta has responded to our concerns and proposed resolving the issues by giving Quest Points users the option to create a separate Meta account.While we welcome this development, we are not stopping the process today.Now continue to monitor the actual user options design and issues, related to the combination and processing of user data from various metaservices. This case shows that Section 19a of the German Competition Law (GWB) is more effective in supervising large digital companies. New tools that allow us to effectively address competition issues on practice.”
Post time: Nov-25-2022