US trade watchdog launches new antitrust investigation into Facebook
The American trade watchdog FTC has launched a new investigation into Facebook that will have to find out whether the company has violated competition rules. The social network confirms the research in its quarterly figures.
Facebook writes that it was informed by the FTC about the new investigation in June. This is an antitrust investigation for which no concrete details are known yet. The US trade watchdog will investigate how the social network gained its dominant market position and whether rules were broken in the process. The US Department of Justice also announced this week it is investigating the market dominance of major tech companies, including social networks.
The new FTC investigation follows the conclusion of a settlement reached by Facebook and the trade watchdog. On Wednesday, it was announced that the social network will pay a $5 billion fine and rebuild its privacy policy from scratch. Facebook must also set up an independent privacy committee. Those measures are the result of multiple privacy violations; the trigger for that investigation was the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Despite the legal pressure, Facebook presented good numbers. The number of monthly active users grew to 2.24 billion and 1.59 billion users are active daily. In both cases this is an increase of 8 percent compared to a year earlier. Quarterly revenue was $16.9 billion, up 28 percent from the same quarter last year. At $2.6 billion, the profit was much lower than last year, because Facebook had to set aside 2 billion for the FTC fine. In the previous quarter, Facebook already withdrew $3 billion from its profits because it was clear that the fine was imminent.