By Dhirendra Tripathi
Investing – Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) shares were trading in the red premarket Friday as the social media's data sharing practices come under fresh investigations in the E.U. and the U.K.
The European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, and Britain's Competition and Markets Authority separately said they would investigate if the company violated rules by using data gathered from advertisers on its social media platform to compete with them.
The formal investigations will also assess whether Facebook ties its online classified ads service ‘Facebook Marketplace’ to its social network, in breach of competition rules.
Ar 8:10 AM ET (1210 GMT), Facebook stock dropped 0.4% premarket.
Facebook is used by almost 3 billion people on a monthly basis and almost 7 million firms advertise on Facebook, according to Executive Vice-President Margrethe Vestager who is in charge of EU’s competition policy.
Facebook said it will cooperate fully with the investigations to “demonstrate they are without merit.”
There is no legal deadline for bringing an antitrust investigation to an end.