eprintid: 10132866 rev_number: 27 eprint_status: archive userid: 608 dir: disk0/10/13/28/66 datestamp: 2021-08-17 11:24:23 lastmod: 2022-07-04 17:11:55 status_changed: 2022-01-13 16:51:39 type: article metadata_visibility: show creators_name: Lovdahl Gormsen, L creators_name: Llanos, JT title: Facebook’s Anticompetitive Lean in Strategies ispublished: pub divisions: UCL divisions: B04 divisions: C05 divisions: F48 keywords: Antitrust, Facebook, Privacy, personal data, data note: This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher's terms and conditions. abstract: Facebook is under fire on several fronts and with good reason. Regulators strive to make sense of and address a plethora of seemingly unrelated issues that arise from the operation of its platform. These range from antitrust, privacy violations, dissemination of harmful content and speech, deception and polarisation to political manipulation. This paper identifies Facebook’s unrestricted and excessive data collection as a unifying theme that requires immediate antitrust action. Once a privacy-oriented social network, Facebook soon mutated into a surveillance machine designed to hoover people’s personal data to identify and understand people’s interests, preferences and emotions and turn that knowledge into profit through the sale of targeted ads. Since people’s innate preference for privacy stood in the way of Facebook’s growth, Facebook resorted to privacy intrusions and deception to access as much user data as possible, thereby gaining market power. Currently, its overwhelming dominant position in the social media market means that no matter how much data Facebook extracts from users, how transparent its information about its data processing practices is and how many privacy scandals ensue from its reckless handling of data, users have nowhere else to go. This paper provides a course of action to correct this unacceptable anticompetitive outcome. The imposition of unfair commercial terms on consumers, the distortion of the competitive process through privacy violations and misleading practices, the squeezing of news publishers’ traffic and foreclosure of actual and potential competitors by Facebook, can be stopped. A combination of data and consumer protection measures alone cannot stop Facebook’s actions, but antitrust enforcement can be used to curb Facebook’s ability to reinforce its data-driven abuse of its market power. date: 2021-06-17 publisher: Elsevier BV official_url: http://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3400204 oa_status: green full_text_type: other language: eng primo: open primo_central: open_green verified: verified_manual elements_id: 1881878 doi: 10.2139/ssrn.3400204 lyricists_name: Llanos, Jose lyricists_id: JTLLA85 actors_name: Llanos, Jose actors_id: JTLLA85 actors_role: owner full_text_status: public publication: SSRN citation: Lovdahl Gormsen, L; Llanos, JT; (2021) Facebook’s Anticompetitive Lean in Strategies. SSRN 10.2139/ssrn.3400204 <https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3400204>. Green open access document_url: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10132866/7/Llanos_Facebook%E2%80%99s%20Anticompetitive%20Lean%20in%20Strategies_AAM.pdf