Antitrust Über Alles. Whither Competition Law After Facebook?

Abstract

After a three-year investigation the German Competition Authority found Facebook’s data policy abusive. In the authority’s assessment, by making the use of its social-networking service conditional upon users granting extensive permission to collect and process their personal data, Facebook unlawfully exploited its dominant position in the German market for social networks. Hence, the GCA has found a way – its way, quite German-specific – to limit Facebook’s ability to gather, combine, and analyze data. In order to achieve this goal, it has acted as a self-appointed enforcer of data protection rules, ascertaining a violation not detected by any data protection authority before and casting a ‘special privacy responsibility’ upon dominant firms.

Keywords: Antitrust; Privacy; Big Data; Facebook; Bundeskartellamt

JEL Classification: D83; K21; L12; L4