Meta Platforms, Inc.

In November 2024, the European Commission fined Meta EUR797.7 million for tying Facebook Marketplace to Facebook, finding Meta abused its dominant position by imposing unfair trading conditions on competing online classified ad services. The decision found Meta leveraged its near-universal personal social network to benefit Marketplace at the expense of competitors like eBay, Vinted, and willhaben. Meta is appealing. Separately, the FTC's landmark antitrust case seeking to force divestiture of Instagram and WhatsApp was dismissed on November 18, 2025, when Judge Boasberg ruled the FTC failed to prove Meta holds monopoly power under a properly defined market that includes TikTok and YouTube.

The company has broken records around the world for data privacy fines. Ireland's Data Privacy Commission assessed a $1.2 billion fine for transferring European users' data to the United States, which is the largest GDPR fine yet. The Texas Attorney General won a $1.4 billion settlement against Meta for surreptitiously building a database of biometric facial data without user consent, in violation of the Texas Capture or Use of Biometric Identifier Act. The European Commission assessed an additional $200 million fine for Meta's ‘Consent or Pay' advertising model. Under this model, EU users of Facebook and Instagram had a choice between consenting to personal data combination for personalised advertising or paying a monthly subscription for an ad-free service. The Federal Trade Commission has also sought to ban Meta from collecting data on users under the age of 18 and block new product launches without a third party assessor's confirmation that META's privacy program has no gaps or weaknesses.

As of March 2026, Facebook is in the midst of a landmark jury trial facing allegations that it intentionally generates billions in revenue from illegal and fraudulent advertisements. A November 2025 leak of internal documents published by Reuters revealed that Meta expected 10.1% of its global revenue would come from scams, illegal onlne casinos, and prohibited medical products. The same analysis showed that Meta ran 15 billion of these "higher risk" ads every day, and charged these advertisers "penalty" rates instead of banning them. Included in these documents was a February 2025 memorandum which explicitly prohibited Meta's ad integrity and safety teams from taking any enforcement actions that would reduce total company revenue by more than .15%.

Meta's platforms have been documented by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the UN as enabling and amplifying hate speech and incitement to violence against Tigrayan, Rohingya, and Palestinian populations. In Ethiopia, Amnesty found Meta's failure to moderate contributed to atrocities against Tigrayans. In Myanmar, the UN fact-finding mission cited Facebook as playing a "determining role" in the Rohingya genocide. For Palestine, HRW documented systematic censorship of Palestinian content while allowing incitement against Palestinians; 7amleh found Meta reduced moderation certainty thresholds to 25% for Palestine-related content. Meta ran IDF drone recruitment ads and allowed leaked internal data showing Israeli government censorship requests were granted at high rates.