Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has announced plans to temporarily shut down Threads in Turkey to comply with an interim order of the Turkish Competition Authority (TCA).
This move by the tech giant is coming after the TCA recently issued an interim order prohibiting the sharing of data between Threads and Instagram.
The TCA alleged that upon investigation, META abused its dominant position by connecting Threads and Instagram applications. It added that META collects data from users who create Threads profiles based on their Instagram accounts without providing users with the option of consent. This was assessed that it would cause irreparable harm until the investigation was completed.
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The TCA noted that within the framework of the current findings, it has decided to apply a temporary measure to prevent data merger behavior that may occur as a result of the data transfer mechanism between Instagram and Threads.
In December, Turkish regulators announced the investigation of the way Meta linked Threads with Instagram, concluding last month there was a strong case to answer for. In its provisional report, the TCA wrote:
•Since META has been operating in the market for many years, it has a comprehensive and detailed data accumulation.
• The size and diversity of META’s user base make META services attractive to advertisers.
• This situation allows META to allocate more resources for service development and makes it difficult for competitors to access advertisers and therefore financial resources, and in this context, META’s activities create an entry barrier in the market.
•In addition, META operates as an ecosystem with the basic services and related services it offers, and this enables META to transfer the power and knowledge it gains from each service to another service and increases its market power.
In response to these allegations, META disagreed with the interim order imposed by the TCA, alleging that the company has complied with all Turkish legal requirements, vowing to appeal the decision.
Meta wrote,
“The TCA recently issued an interim order prohibiting the sharing of data between Threads and Instagram. We disagree with the interim order, we believe we are in compliance with all Turkish legal requirements, and we will appeal. The TCA’s interim order leaves us with no choice but to temporarily shut down Threads in Türkiye. We will continue to constructively engage with the TCA and hope to bring Threads back to people in Türkiye as quickly as possible.”
Furthermore, META is reportedly taking steps to minimize any disruption as much as possible, which include;
- Everyone using Threads in Türkiye will be notified of this decision within the Threads app before 29 April.
- People using Threads in Türkiye can choose whether to deactivate but not delete their Threads profile or to delete their profile.
- If a person chooses to deactivate their profile, then users’ posts and interactions with other people’s posts will become visible again if Threads returns to Türkiye.
- People with deactivated profiles can download their posts and preserve their existing content through our Download Your Information tool at any time.
In the buildup to April 29, everyone using Threads in Turkey will receive a notification about the impending closure, and they will be given a choice to either delete or deactivate their profile.