⚠ Self-Preferencing CurbsLow threat

Cross-promotion is exactly the kind of behavior competition regulators have begun to police in dominant platforms: the use of one dominant service to advantage the company's other products. The concern is that Meta's ability to funnel its billions of users toward whatever it launches next gives it an unfair, self-reinforcing advantage that forecloses competition, and rules against such 'self-preferencing' are spreading, especially under Europe's Digital Markets Act.

The danger is that curbs on cross-promotion would blunt one of Meta's cheapest and most powerful growth levers. If Meta were barred from freely steering users between its apps, or forced to give rivals equivalent access, launching the next product would become slower and dearer, and the family's compounding distribution advantage would erode toward that of an ordinary company.

Self-preferencing rules, however, are new, contested, and hard to draw without banning ordinary product integration that users like, and Meta can comply in form while preserving much of the substance. The underlying value — that people already use several Meta apps — is not something a regulator can easily order away.

Put the risk at low-to-moderate. Self-preferencing curbs are a real and growing regulatory constraint aimed at the cross-promotion lever, most sharply in Europe under the DMA¹ — but they advance slowly, admit workarounds, and cannot undo the basic fact of Meta's overlapping audiences.