In the investigation about META Platforms, Inc. (META), which was initiated in response to the suspicion that META abused its dominant position by means of combining Threads and Instagram, the Competition Board took an interim measure decision in the meeting dated 08.02.2024 (Interim Measure Decision).

In the said decision, it was concluded that META’s combination of the data of the users who created Threads profiles based on their Instagram accounts without giving users an option for consent would lead to irreparable harms until the investigation was completed. In addition, the following observations were made:

• META has a comprehensive and detailed data set since it has been active in the market for long years.
• META has large and diverse user base, which makes its services attractive for advertisers.
• This allows META to allocate more resources to develop services, making it complicated for competitors to access advertisers and thus financial resources, within this framework META’s practices constitute a barrier to entry.
• Moreover, META operates as an ecosystem with its core services and related services, which enables META to transfer the power and accumulation obtained from each service to another service and increases its market power.

Within the framework of the existing findings, it was decided that an interim measure shall be taken for preventing data combination that may occur as a result of data transferring mechanism between Instagram and Threads and based on annual gross income in 2022, administrative fine of 4.796.152,96 TL shall be imposed for each day starting from 20.02.2024 until the compliance measures which will be proposed by META and which will fulfill the requirement of the Interim Measure Decision enters the Competition Authority’s registry. 

During the following process, in order to comply with the Competition Board’s Interim Measure Decision, META submitted proposals including practices which have been brought for the users in the European Union before, in the form of “using without a profile”. However, those proposals were considered insufficient to solve competitive concerns about data combination and not accepted in the Board meeting on 14.03.2024 due to the following reasons:

• Instagram account is necessary to use Threads (active or passive Instagram user account),
• For users who currently use Threads with their existing accounts, data combination continues,
• Service quality is lower for using without a profile compared to using with a profile; therefore, by interfering in their wills and directing them to use with profile, users are obliged to consent to data combination.

On 15.04.2024, META announced that Threads service would be officially ceased in Türkiye and users in Türkiye would not be able to use Threads as of 29.04.2024. META stated that there will not be data sharing between Threads and Instagram after Threads is shut down; after it is decided that the requirement of the interim decision is fulfilled, Threads will be available in Türkiye again and users will be able to access to a screen that allows downloading the information about their Threads profiles or deleting their profiles.

META stated in its petition, which was submitted to the Competition Authority on 02.05.2024, that it deactivated the profiles of all Threads users in Türkiye as of 30.04.2024 and Turkish users would not be able to use Threads starting from that date.

Thus, on 03.05.2024, the Competition Board decided that

• The solution proposals for stopping the activities of Threads in Türkiye render the obligations provided for in the Interim Measure Decision moot the Interim Measure Decision,
• The daily administrative fines imposed on META shall be terminated and META shall be imposed a total of 335.730.707,20 TL administrative fines for 70 days from 20.02.2024 to 29.04.2024.