Facebook will take European competition authorities to court who have been investigating their practices. The company led by Mark Zuckerberg believes that the level of scrutiny by regulators is too high and that too much data is being asked for.
The social network has been in the sights of European regulators since last year, with research into the use it makes of data and the way it manages its Marketplace. In all, the company has already made 315,000 documents available to the European Commission, which is equivalent to approximately 1.7 million pages with information about its performance.
The exceptionally large size of the Commission's requests means that we are forced to submit documents that are predominantly irrelevant and are not related to the investigations, said Timothy Lamb, Facebook's general counsel, in a statement quoted by Reuters.
The official says that European regulatory authorities are asking for including highly personal information, such as medical, financial and family data of employees.
We believe that the requests in question should be reviewed by the European courts, underlines Timothy Lamb. Facebook also intends to take the case to the European Court of Justice so that requests for information cease.
On the other side of the Atlantic, Facebook, as well as Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google, are being investigated by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on suspicion of using their power in the market to eliminate any competitive opportunity from smaller companies. The leaders of the technological giants would be heard by the US Congress on July 27, however, the audio was postponed without an announced date.
