Nigeria’s consumer protection watchdog accused US tech giant Meta of abusing market dominance and sharing personal data without permission. Meta is the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
Nigeria has issued a $220 million (€202 million) fine against US tech giant Meta for violations of antitrust, data protection and consumer rights laws.
Meta is the parent company of the social media platforms Facebook and Instagram, as well as of the WhatsApp instant messaging service.
As someone who used to live in Nigeria
I’m shocked our insanely corrupt government is trying to do something mildly good
The question is: where does the money go to?
Bribes
People in government
Police
It basically never goes into real public services or actually trying to help the country
If I worked there and received the letter, I wonder if I would think it’s a scam and throw it out.
Insanely corrupt nonwithstanding, from the outside my impression of Nigeria’s government was always that they’re smart enough to not saw at the branch they’re sitting on. Hence also the comparatively good education system: Embezzling funding there might be quite profitable, but it’s even more profitable to have at least half-way educated people run an at least half-way developed economy and then embezzling funds from there. It’s much more profitable to steal the harvest than it is to steal the seeds. Compare with South Africa and their electricity grid.
This just in, Meta ignore Nigerian fines. The reason? It’s Nigeria, what are they gonna do?
They could block Facebook. Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa, it’s a significant market.
According to meta, they make $2.77 per customer not in NA, Europe, Asia, or Pacific. There are 16 million Nigerians on facebook according to their statistics, so 177 million per year.
If the fine doesn’t keep renewing itself or growing if they continue, this will just be another ‘cost of doing business’ situation. Even at that price.
They’ll lose almost three days of profit!!! Noooooooooooo
I hope Meta becomes an easy money that governments can just use like its in their pocket.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Meta is the parent company of the social media platforms Facebook and Instagram, as well as of the WhatsApp instant messaging service.
Nigeria’s Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) on Friday accused Meta of discriminatory practices, abuse of market dominance, sharing Nigerians’ personal data without authorization and denying Nigerians the right to determine how their data is used.
FCCPC chief executive officer Adamu Abdullahi said investigations carried out by the commission showed that Meta had engaged in “invasive practices against data subjects in Nigeria.”
Abdullahi said the tech giant must “comply with the prevailing law and cease the exploitation of Nigerian consumers and their market abuse.”
The commission ordered the firm to “desist from future similar or other conduct/practices that do not meet nationally applicable standards.”
Earlier this month, the European Union accused Meta of breaching the bloc’s tech regulations.
The original article contains 310 words, the summary contains 140 words. Saved 55%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
