Meta is facing prosecution in South Africa, and the Competition Tribunal has been set for today, Tuesday, April…
Meta is facing prosecution in South Africa, and the Competition Tribunal has been set for today, Tuesday, April 18. The hearing concerns the Competition Commission’s case against Meta and WhatsApp for the alleged misuse of its market dominance in South Africa and anti-competitive behaviour.
The commission alleged that the tech giant threatened to remove #LetsTalk and GovChat- a South African government-citizen engagement platform that uses the WhatsApp Business API to facilitate real-time communication – to deal directly with the South African government and from using its WhatsApp Business API.
This prosecution issue with the Competition Commission is not something Meta has to deal with for the first time. This accusation dates back to March 2021, when the tech giant was allegedly engaged in unfair commercial practices and threatened to deactivate GovChat from its WhatsApp commercial Account (WABA) for allegedly breaking the terms of service.
Referencing the conflict situation, MyBroadband reported that GovChat had accused Facebook of contacting its clients in the government to let them know they were set to be “off-boarded” from the WhatsApp Business API platform.
Facebook, in response, claimed that GovChat routinely disregarded its terms of service and refused its offers of help in doing so. GovChat is a private company, and Meta claimed that it had violated predetermined rules by “signing up organizations to the WhatsApp API without going through our onboarding process.
As the hearing nears, the Commission has also requested that the Tribunal impose a 10% of their combined revenue maximum penalty against Meta Platforms, WhatsApp, and Facebook South Africa.
Read Also: Kenya court order puts Meta content moderation services in uncertainty
Meta’s legal issues in recent months
This will not be its first encounter with an antitrust and anticompetitive distortion case. According to CBNC, Meta got a list of issues from the European Union regarding its Facebook Marketplace online classifieds operation in the final month of 2022.
At that time, the executive arm of the EU, the European Commission, admitted that by limiting competition in the online classified ad marketplaces, the big tech firm had broken EU antitrust regulations. With the perspective that they are a pro-consumer and pro-competitive company, Meta refuted these allegations.
However, apart from anticompetitive cases, the tech giant has been in a circle of legal dramas in Africa and beyond in recent months. Late last year, it was sued for $2 billion in Kenya’s High Court for allegedly encouraging hate speech, inciting ethnic conflict, and failing to moderate content in Eastern and Southern Africa.
Early in January, it was fined about €400 million ($430 million) by the Irish Data Protection Commission for violating the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation in connection with both its Facebook and Instagram services.
According to Reuters, a fresh lawsuit was launched in March of this year against Mark Zuckerberg and other Meta Platforms Inc. officials and directors for failing to take sufficient action to end child sexual exploitation and sex trafficking on Facebook and Instagram.
Meta’s rough days
Although 2022 was a rough year for the tech industry, the tech giant faced major breakdowns, weak revenues, regulatory woes, and a metaverse vision crumpled, and with these legal battles spewing over to 2023, it might not just be a better year.
Although the company appears optimistic for this year and has made significant actions to help it manage its finances and reduce spending, such as reducing its workforce and terminating over 12000 employees, it may still need to do some work.
DW stated that since Facebook officially became Meta in October 2021, the firm has lost over two-thirds of its stock market value. Statista also reported that in 2022, Meta Platforms generated revenue of over 116 billion U.S. dollars, a modest reduction from the previous year.
Part of the sudden decline apart from Mark Zuckerberg’s huge loss in his Metaverse dream may be a result of whistleblower and former Facebook employee Frances Haugen’s damning revelations. While its sales of ads and revenues are declining, regulatory scrutiny is growing.
Also, Meta appears to be unexpectedly discrete to some extent, possibly saving its energy for a significant drop, while other tech titans appear to be hopping on the AI train. However, in February, the tech giant publicly announced the release of LLaMA (Large Language Model Meta AI), its own AI.