FTC Sues Meta: A Look at Antitrust Allegations
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has initiated legal action against Meta, accusing the company of creating an illegal monopoly in social media through the acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp. The antitrust agency aims to demonstrate the necessity of overturning these acquisitions. This is reported by Reuters.
According to the FTC, the purpose of acquiring these companies was to eliminate competitors that could threaten Facebook's dominance. The lawsuit was filed in 2020 during Donald Trump's presidency.
Meta's legal chief, Jennifer Newstead, has described the case as weak and detrimental to investment in technology.
"It's absurd that the FTC is trying to dismantle a major American company while the administration is attempting to save the Chinese TikTok," Newstead wrote.
Meta has been in contact with Trump since his election, rejecting content moderation that Republicans consider censorship and donating $1 million to Trump's inauguration. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has also visited the White House multiple times in recent weeks.
Zuckerberg is expected to testify in court, where he will be questioned about emails in which he proposed buying Instagram to eliminate a potential competitor to Facebook and expressed concerns that WhatsApp could evolve from an encrypted messaging service into a social network.
In court documents, Meta insists that the acquisitions of Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014 were beneficial to users. The company also argues that Zuckerberg's previous statements have lost relevance due to the current tough competition from TikTok (ByteDance), YouTube (Google), and Apple's iMessage.
The FTC believes that Meta holds a monopoly in the market for platforms facilitating communication with friends and family. It states that Meta's main competitors in the U.S. are only Snapchat and MeWe, while platforms like X (Twitter), TikTok, YouTube, and Reddit, which are focused on content sharing among strangers based on shared interests, are not considered direct competitors to Meta.
The trial is scheduled for July 2025. If the FTC wins, it will need to prove in the second phase of the proceedings that forcing Meta to divest assets such as Instagram or WhatsApp would indeed help restore competition in the market.