Meta wins FTC antitrust trial that focused on WhatsApp, Instagram

Meta won a high-profile antitrust case against the Federal Trade Commission, which accused the company of having a monopoly on social networks.

In a memorandum opinion released Tuesday, Judge James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. He said the FTC failed to prove his claim. The case, filed by the FTC five years ago, was about Meta’s acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp.

“Whether Meta has had monopoly power in the past or not, the agency needs to show that it continues to hold that power,” Boasberg said. It was said in the legal document. “The court’s decision today determined that the FTC did not do this. A decision stating this will be issued today.”

Boasberg dismissed the case in 2021, saying the agency did not have sufficient evidence to prove that “Facebook has market power.” In August of that year, the FTC filed an amended notice. complaint with more detail on the company’s user numbers and metrics than rivals like Snapchat, the now-defunct Google+ social network, and Myspace.

Boasberg in 2022 after reviewing the changes reigned He said the case could proceed, saying the FTC had provided more details than before.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, former business chief Sheryl Sandberg, Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom and other current and former Meta executives testified in the lawsuit, which began in April.

The FTC claimed that Meta should not have been allowed to acquire Instagram for $1 billion in 2012 and WhatsApp for $19 billion in 2014, and the agency called for these units to be separated from the company. The commission also claimed that there were no significant alternatives to apps such as Facebook and Instagram that people use to communicate with friends and family in the online social space.

Boasberg ultimately sided with Meta’s argument that the tech industry has evolved since Facebook’s early days and that the company now faces a wide range of competitors like TikTok.

“While each of Meta’s empirical demonstrations is debatable, they all tell a consistent story: people see TikTok and YouTube as substitutes for Facebook and Instagram, and the amount of competitive overlap is economically significant,” Boasberg wrote. “Against this unmistakable pattern, the FTC offers no empirical evidence of substitution whatsoever.”

Much of Judge Boasberg’s conclusion was built on the transformation of the social media market in recent years and Meta’s changing position in this space. User trends have moved heavily towards video, where TikTok and YouTube have huge user bases and huge network effects.

“The most used part of Meta apps is thus indistinguishable from services on TikTok and YouTube,” Boasberg wrote.

The decision came just over two months later Google He avoided the harshest possible punishment for an antitrust case he lost last year. Google found to have an illegal monopoly in its main market of internet search, US District Judge Amit Mehta He rejected the Justice Department’s request and ruled that the company would not have to sell its Chrome browser. But Google has been ordered to loosen its grip on search data.

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