EU reportedly set to open formal antitrust probe into Facebook

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European regulators are reportedly set to open a formal probe into whether Facebook has violated antitrust laws by undermining rivals in the classified advertising market.

The European Commission has already sent questionnaires to Facebook and its rivals asking whether the tech giant is warping the classified advertising business by promoting its online marketplace for free to its users, the Financial Times reported Wednesday.

Facebook is one of the few US Big Tech companies that’s managed to escape formal antitrust scrutiny from the European Union so far. The EU had previously investigated Microsoft, Amazon, Apple and Google, with most of those probes launched in the past couple of years.

The launch of a formal probe by the EU could come in days, but the timing and the scope of the investigation are still being discussed, the FT reported, citing three senior people with direct knowledge of the case.

Representatives for Facebook did not immediately return The Post’s request for comment.

European antitrust regulators previously sent questionnaires to Facebook in 2019 about its marketplace service, according to Reuters. And last year, European regulators sent another round of questionnaires, asking whether Facebook Marketplace benefits unfairly from the massive amounts of data the social media giant collects, Reuters previously reported.

In July of last year, Facebook sued EU antitrust regulators for seeking information they said was beyond what’s necessary for their investigations into the company’s data and marketplace.

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