South Africa sues Meta of abusing Market Dominance.

South Africa’s competition regulator prosecutes Meta platforms, WhatsApp inc, and Facebook for abusing their dominance in the social media sector.

The complaint was made to the competition tribunal for action on the 14th of March. If Facebook is found guilty, the tech guru would be fined 10% of the firm's revenues earned in the Republic and its exports from the preceding year.

The commission mentioned that Meta (Facebook) has the intention to offboard GovChat and #LetsTalk, GovChat was launched in 2018, and it enables the citizens to communicate with all levels of government about different issues and also ask questions pertaining to covid19. with a tech startup that brings the government and its residents together through the WhatsApp Business Application Programming Interface (API).

Meta (Facebook) imposed terms and conditions to regulate access to the WhatsApp Business API’s data.

The deputy competition commissioner, Tembinkosi Bonakele said in a statement that

“Access to digital markets has now become indispensable. “In turn, access to digital markets is dependent on access to digital platforms including, as in this case, access to an important digital communication platform, the WhatsApp Business API.”

The API permits medium and large-sized businesses and governments to message at scale, they also make use of automation, integrate with eCommerce, build chatbots, and track metrics.

It should be noted that Meta (Facebook) is also having a hard time with Europe and United States regulators over privacy issues.