By Foo Yun Chee

LUXEMBOURG – Meta Platforms Inc compared Wednesday’s EU antitrust regulatory searches with a fishing super trawler. They are investigating the Facebook (NASDAQ) owner to see if they have any information about their online marketplace and data.

Meta claims it has handed more than one million documents to European Commission in response to its request for information on its Facebook Marketplace and its online classified ads.

The company has however questioned the necessity, proportionality, and justifications of data requests as well as the EU Competition Watchdog’s reasons. Company also criticized the use by the EU competition watchdog of over 2,500 search words – such as “big question”, “free” and “not for us” to crawl the company’s files.

The daily penalty amount of 8 million Euro ($8.6 Million) for failure to comply is upheld by the company. It then filed its complaint with the General Court, second-highest EU court.

You need to find the meaning of these broad-ranging search terms and combine them with the vague nature. It is obvious, once you have done that it will be clear. It is a fishing expedition of a classical nature,” Meta lawyer Daniel Jowell stated to five judges.

“Indeed we would go even further. He said that the Commission operates like a fishing supertrawler and is sweeping the entire seabed. It hopes to later discover rare species in its large nets.”

In the next few months, the court will make its ruling.

T-451/20 Meta Platforms Ireland vs. Commission.

($1 = 0.9332 euros)