The shut-down will be solely in Turkey, starting April 29 and the reason is that Meta needs to comply with an interim order of the Turkish competition authority (via Reuters).
The company assures in a blog post that Threads’ activity ceasing won’t impact Meta’s other social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp in Turkey.
“We are taking steps to minimize any disruption as much as possible”, reads the blog post and adds:
- Everyone using Threads in Turkey will be notified of this decision within the Threads app before 29 April.
- People using Threads in Turkey can choose whether to deactivate but not delete their Threads profile, or to delete their profile.
- If a person chooses to deactivate their profile, then users’ posts and interactions with other people’s posts will become visible again if Threads returns to Turkey.
- People with deactivated profiles can download their posts and preserve their existing content through our Download Your Information tool at any time.
But why?
The reason for the shut-down is that there’s an ongoing investigation into Meta’s potential abuse of its dominant position in the market, as we’ve reported earlier.This action follows the initiation of a probe in December by Turkey’s competition watchdog into Meta, the parent company of Facebook, for potentially breaching competition laws by linking Instagram with its newer platform, Threads.
The watchdog stated that the interim measure will be in effect until a conclusive verdict is reached, since the data obtained and merged through these two apps could “violate competition law and cause irreparable damage” in the market.
On a side note, the Turkish authority fined Meta 4.8 million lira ($148,000) daily as part of a separate investigation over a notification message that the company sends users about the sharing of data.
The notification about data sharing between the company’s Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp services did not provide sufficient information and was not transparent enough, it said.
The authority also noted that the manner in which the notification prompts users to consent to data sharing does not adequately mitigate concerns regarding anticompetitive behavior.