New York attorney general launches antitrust probe at Facebook
New York’s attorney general has launched an investigation into Facebook for potential antitrust violations.
Letitia James’s probe will span several states as she focuses on “Facebook’s dominance in the industry and the potential anticompetitive conduct stemming from that dominance”.
Read more: Can Facebook Dating convert Likes into love?
“Even the largest social media platform in the world must follow the law and respect consumers,” James said today.
“I am proud to be leading a bipartisan coalition of attorneys general in investigating whether Facebook has stifled competition and put users at risk.
“We will use every investigative tool at our disposal to determine whether Facebook’s actions may have endangered consumer data, reduced the quality of consumers’ choices, or increased the price of advertising.”
Facebook’s share price fell 0.7 per cent in pre-market trading.
Attorney generals from Colorado, Florida, North Carolina, the District of Columbia, Tennessee, Ohio, Nebraska and Iowa are all involved in the investigation.
The social media giant is under a separate investigation by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over antitrust.
Read more: Massive Facebook data leak exposes 419m users’ phone numbers
Mark Zuckerberg’s company came to a $5bn settlement with Facebook over its privacy policies in July, following the Cambridge Analytica scandal in which a data breach affected 87m users.
Facebook’s latest privacy blunder saw a data leak expose 419m users’ phone numbers, including 18m UK users.
Images credited to Getty