Nigerian tribunal upholds $220 million fine against Meta for violating consumer, data laws

ABUJA :A $220 million fine against Meta Platforms by Nigeria's competition watchdog for violating local consumer, data protection and privacy laws has been upheld following an unsuccessful appeal, Nigeria's Competition and Consumer Protection Tribunal said on Friday.
Nigeria's Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) fined Meta last July for discriminatory and exploitative practices against Nigerian consumers, compared with other jurisdictions with similar regulations.

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CNA

3 days ago

• CNA

Commentary: WhatsApp's ‘no ads' promise meets Meta's reality

LONDON: It's hard to think of a more extraordinary business deal than Facebook's US$19 billion acquisition of WhatsApp in February 2014. Its creators were outliers. With a lean staff of just a few dozen people, they had no marketing department, no sign on the door, and had spent zero cents from their sole investor, Sequoia Capital. But WhatsApp had 450 million users, mostly outside the US. Founders Jan Koum and Brian Acton also hated ads. They'd spent a combined 20 years working at Yahoo, bonding over their frustration with a business model that sucked up personal data to show us pop-ups. Building ad systems was 'depressing', Koum told me in an interview in mid-2014. But not too depressing to sell their chat service to online ad magnate Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer of Meta Platforms, just a few months later. Eight of WhatsApp's roughly 50 employees made more than US$100 million off that deal, while Koum gained a net worth of US$6.8 billion. This week, just over a decade later, ads are finally coming to WhatsApp. They'll appear in its Updates (formerly Status) tab, where users post images and videos. Advertisers will also be able to promote Channels there and collect thousands of followers. Meta described the rollout as 'gradual', suggesting WhatsApp users will start to see ads over the coming weeks and months. "THIS TIME IT'S FOR REAL" Zuckerberg has long been under pressure to monetise WhatsApp, a prominent cash sink whose user base has soared to more than 3 billion but which has yet to pay its own way. Now, with Meta's costly push into artificial intelligence (AI), including a US$14.3 billion investment in data labelling startup Scale AI, the company is moving on the last big piece of real estate it can squeeze cash from. (Meta had already begun monetising WhatsApp through business messaging tools and click-to-WhatsApp ads on Facebook and Instagram, but this is the first time ads are appearing inside WhatsApp itself.) Ads fly in the face of what WhatsApp's founders wanted. For a few years after his extraordinary sale, Koum resisted efforts inside Facebook to feature ads on WhatsApp, his co-founder Acton later told me, while Acton himself tried to convince Sheryl Sandberg, then the company's chief operating officer, to introduce a metered-user model. His idea was to charge users a tiny amount, perhaps a tenth of a cent, after a certain large number of free messages were expended and monetise WhatsApp that way. Sandberg stuck by the ad model that already allowed Facebook to print money for years, telling Acton that his idea wouldn't scale. By the time he left the company, Acton knew that he couldn't stop the inevitable. 'At the end of the day, I sold my company,' he said. Still, both internal and public resistance to ads has been enough to make Meta's monetisation plans for WhatsApp a fitful journey over the last decade. Meta's chief marketing officer, Alex Schultz, admitted on LinkedIn that the company had announced ads a few times already. 'This time it's for real,' he added. TECH'S PUREST IDEALS Meta first publicly announced its intention to bring ads to WhatsApp Status in November 2018, then put the plans on hold and nixed them in 2020, before announcing in 2023 that the rollout was back on. The U-turns are down to the staunch views of WhatsApp's founders, who infused company culture even after they vested their stock options and left Meta. WhatsApp users are also accustomed to a clean, ad-free app that keeps their conversations private with end-to-end encryption. When the company tweaked its privacy terms in 2021 to add more business-messaging features, many ditched it for rival apps like Signal and Telegram. Meta had to move slowly. Now it's trying to make up for lost time. It will target ads based on users' country or city, channels they follow and how they interact with ads they see on Status or on sister apps Facebook and Instagram if their accounts are linked. That's less invasive than the targeting done on Facebook or Instagram, but it's still a form of clutter that WhatsApp's founders abhorred. And Zuckerberg could still push for deeper insights as revenue from Status starts to pour in. According to Schultz, 1.5 billion users visit the feature everyday. Meta's investors can rest easy knowing the company has yet another platform to capitalise on as Zuckerberg spends heavily on AI. The rest of us have yet another reminder that tech's most important visionaries can sometimes be as naive as they are idealistic. Sam Altman's efforts to start OpenAI as a nonprofit that lived off donations from benevolent billionaires was arguably a pipe dream, hence his eventual partnership with Microsoft. DeepMind's Demis Hassabis spent years trying to break away from Alphabet's Google, believing the search giant would be willing to spin off a valuable AI lab after spending US$650 million on it. In the end, he was wrong and his company was drawn deeper into Google. Koum and Acton were similarly guileless to think they could sell WhatsApp to one of the world's biggest advertising businesses and avoid ads. Of course, US$19 billion can make even the purest ideals go quiet. In the end, money talks.

Business Times

4 days ago

• Business Times

Blackstone snaps up stakes in office buildings leased by Meta

[NEW YORK] Blackstone's real estate business purchased stakes in two office properties in Bellevue, Washington, that are leased by Meta Platforms. Owner Shorenstein Investment Advisers sold an interest in two buildings, known as Blocks 5 and 6, to funds affiliated with Blackstone Real Estate, according to a statement on Wednesday (Jun 18). Blackstone is buying a 40 per cent stake in each property and the pair of buildings is valued at a combined US$545 million, according to a source familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified, citing private details. The New York-based asset manager has been hunting for more office deals, focusing on newer buildings with strong tenant demand. In January, Blackstone President Jon Gray said that the office market had 'bottomed'. Earlier this month, funds affiliated with Blackstone Real Estate purchased a stake in Manhattan's 1345 Avenue of the Americas. Bellevue has benefited from the technology companies, such as and Salesforce, that have offices in the area. Its 19 per cent office vacancy rate in the central business district compares with 33 per cent for downtown Seattle, which was hit particularly hard by the pandemic, according to CBRE Group. The Block 5 and 6 buildings, which each rise 11 storeys, are in the Spring District. Block 6, which opened in 2023, was recently subleased by software company Snowflake, which moved into the property in May. Shorenstein and Wright Runstad & Co also struck a deal with Drawbridge Realty to sell Block 13, a nine-storey office building in the area, according to the statement. BLOOMBERG

Straits Times

4 days ago

• Straits Times

West Africa wants deals with Trump but US entry bans a barrier, Nigerian minister says

FILE PHOTO: Nigeria's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Yusuf Tuggar, delivers his speech at the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) golden jubilee celebration of the regional bloc in Nigeria's commercial capital, Lagos, Nigeria, May 28, 2025. REUTERS/Sodiq Adelakun/File photo West Africa wants deals with Trump but US entry bans a barrier, Nigerian minister says ABUJA - West African nations want to strike deals with the U.S. over energy and rare earth minerals, but the Trump administration's looming expansion of travel bans risks derailing those efforts, Nigeria's foreign minister said on Wednesday. U.S. President Donald Trump this month implemented full or partial travel bans for foreign nationals from a dozen countries as part of his immigration crackdown. A possible broadening of the restrictions to an additional 36 countries would include nearly all of West Africa. "This would be most unfortunate if it comes to pass, because we are a region of opportunities ready to do deals," said Nigeria's Yussuf Tuggar, who currently chairs regional bloc ECOWAS's council of foreign ministers. President Trump has upended longstanding trade relations since returning to the White House, using erratic tariff threats and aggressive tactics in a bid to secure better deals from trading partners. As part of an agreement with Beijing, for example, Trump said China will supply the U.S. with magnets and rare earth minerals critical to the auto and battery industries in exchange for Chinese students' continued access to U.S. universities. "We possess critical minerals and even rare earths," Tuggar told West African government ministers, citing the example of samarium - used for military-grade magnets and nuclear reactor control rods - found in his home state in Nigeria. "We would like to do deals with the U.S., but visa restrictions are non-tariff barriers to deals," he said. He also touted the oil and gas-rich region as an energy partner. "We are also a strategic alternative to more distant and politically divergent energy producers. So, we will do deals for our prosperity. The only question is with whom," he said. The U.S. has cited reasons for the bans including governments' failure to produce reliable identity documents, corruption, and high volumes of visa overstays by certain countries' citizens. REUTERS Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.