Are Messenger and Marketplace two separate entities or are they still just hiding under the wing of Facebook? This is the discussion that Meta is currently having with the European Union. The company therefore believes that these two services do not count separately as part of its role as a digital gatekeeper.

The companies that have been assigned the role of gatekeepers by the EU under the Digital Markets Act have been identified, but all is still far from being in order. Some dispute that certain parts of their activities do not fall under the stricter rules at all. We’ve already seen this, for example, at Apple and Microsoft with iMessage and Bing, respectively. Now Meta goes one step further with both Messenger and Marketplace.

A small role

In a statement from Meta to The Verge, a spokesperson confirmed that the company has informed the EU that it believes both services are not covered by the DMA. As a messaging service, Messenger should be open to smaller competitors and for the Marketplace sales platform, the rules should focus primarily on protecting sellers.

The argument with Meta is that Messenger is simply part of Facebook. A remarkable line of thought, as the company separated the two in 2014. Messenger has been a standalone app for almost a decade. You still need a Facebook account to use Messenger. However, if you disable the former, you can still use the messaging app.

For Marketplace, Meta justifies that the service connects consumers directly. According to Mark Zuckerberg and his employees, the company itself has nothing to do with the interactions.