EU fines Facebook for misleading regulators on WhatsApp deal News
EU fines Facebook for misleading regulators on WhatsApp deal

European Union (EU) antitrust regulators fined [press release] Facebook [corporate website] 122 million dollars on Thursday for misleading information regarding a deal for WhatsApp [corporate website]. The European Commission [official website], found that in order to avoid anti-trust concerns, Facebook stated that it could not automatically match users between Facebook and WhatsApp when it purchased the company in 2014. The European Commission states that the technology to automatically match users existed in 2014 and that Facebook staff were aware of that. Facebook alleges that the missing information in the 2014 merger deal was not intentional.

Facebook was founded [official profile] in 2004 and is one of the most popular social media networking websites today. Its popularity has subjecting it to numerous lawsuits. In May the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission of Thailand [official website] ordered [JURIST report] Facebook to remove a video of King Maha Vajiralongkorn or face legal action. In April the New York Court of Appeals [official website] ruled [JURIST report] that law enforcement can seize private Facebook account information. In March Facebook settled a class-action [JURIST report] lawsuit levied against it for its prior practice of scanning private messages to aid in ads.