UK orders Facebook’s parent to sell Giphy

British antitrust regulators on Tuesday ordered Facebook’s parent company Meta to sell the animated images library Giphy, escalating the country’s efforts to push back against the growing power of the world’s largest technology companies.

The Competition and Markets Authority said the acquisition of Giphy, which Meta bought last year, reduced competition between social media platforms and in the display advertising market, which Facebook dominates and where Giphy was beginning to expand before the deal.

Though the animated images, known as GIFS, are often silly clips and memes shared in text messages and social media posts — like Homer Simpson slinking back into a hedge — authorities concluded that Meta’s acquisition could cause serious harm to competition.

Giphy is a dominant platform for creating and sharing GIFS, and regulators warned that if Meta restricted access to its vast archive of images it would further solidify Meta’s leadership position in social media.

Meta’s services, including Facebook, Whatsapp and Instagram, account for 73% of user time spent on social media in Britain, regulators said. The overall company was known as Facebook until a name change in October.

The Competition and Markets Authority said its order was legally binding and should result in Meta selling all of Giphy, not just the piece of its business in Britain.

Meta’s ownership of Giphy allows the company “to increase its significant market power in social media even further, through controlling competitors’ access to Giphy GIFS,” Stuart Mcintosh, chair of the team investigating the deal, said in a statement. By ordering the sale, “we are protecting millions of social media users and promoting competition and innovation in digital advertising.”

Meta has four weeks to decide whether to appeal. “We disagree with this decision,” the company said in a statement Tuesday.

The effort to reverse the Giphy acquisition is another step Britain is taking against the biggest tech companies.