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The
Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) said it
was seeking an unspecified fine from Facebook for promoting a
virtual private network as a way for people to protect their
data, while secretly using the information to pick targets for
commercial acquisitions.
The lawsuit echoes a landmark U.S. Federal Trade Commission
action accusing the social media giant of inappropriately
maintaining market dominance by using customer data to decide on
takeover targets including messaging app Whatsapp and
image-sharing app Instagram.
"There is a link to what the FTC is saying, but they're looking
at a competition issue," ACCC Chairman Rod Sims said at a
televised news conference. "We're looking at the consumer."
A Facebook spokeswoman said the company was "always clear about
the information we collect and how it is used".
"We will review the recent filing by the ACCC and will continue
to defend our position in response to this recent filing," she
added.
Facebook shut down the VPN product in 2019.
Earlier this month, Australia went ahead with plans to make
Facebook and internet giant Google pay domestic media outlets
for content that appeared on their websites, at Sims's
recommendation.
The Australian privacy regulator has a separate lawsuit against
Facebook accusing it of breaching user privacy with a
personality test run by political marketing consultant Cambridge
Analytica. Facebook is defending that action. The ACCC is also
suing Google alleging it misled users about data collection.
Unlike the U.S. lawsuit, which may force Facebook to sell
assets, the Australian lawsuit may force the company to change
the way it discloses its activities to users, said Rob Nicholls,
a University of New South Wales associate professor who
specialises in competition law.
"Rather than take the antitrust approach of 'the only way to
solve this is to break it up', it's more 'we're going to take
the actions that we can under the existing law to change the
conduct so that it is acceptable to Australian consumers and
Australian businesses," Nicholls said.
(Additional reporting by Nikhil Kurian Nainan in Bengaluru;
Editing by Sonya Hepinstall and Stephen Coates)
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