Meta Faces Legal Challenge: Antitrust Lawsuit Unfolds
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has launched a legal action against Meta, accusing the corporation of establishing an illegal monopoly in social media by acquiring Instagram and WhatsApp. The antitrust agency aims to prove the necessity of reversing these deals, according to Reuters.
The FTC claims that the acquisitions were intended to eliminate competitors that could threaten Facebook’s dominance as the leading social media platform. The lawsuit was filed in 2020 during the presidency of Donald Trump.
Meta's General Counsel Jennifer Newstead described the case in her blog as weak and detrimental to investments in technology.
"It’s absurd that the FTC is trying to dismantle a major American company at the same time the administration is seeking to support the Chinese TikTok," Newstead wrote.
Since Trump’s election, Meta has regularly engaged with him, rejecting content moderation that Republicans view as censorship and donating $1 million to Trump’s inauguration. Meta’s 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 where he proposed buying Instagram to eliminate a potential competitor to Facebook, as well as expressing concerns that WhatsApp could evolve from an encrypted messaging service into a social network.
In court documents, Meta argues that the acquisition of Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014 was beneficial for users. The company also asserts that prior statements by Zuckerberg are outdated, given the current fierce competition from TikTok (ByteDance), YouTube (Google), and Apple’s iMessage.
The FTC believes that Meta holds a monopoly position in the market for platforms enabling communication with friends and family. According to them, the primary competitors to Meta in the U.S. are only Snapchat and MeWe, while services like X (Twitter), TikTok, YouTube, and Reddit, which focus on content dissemination among strangers based on shared interests, are not considered direct competitors.
The trial is scheduled for July 2025. If the FTC wins, in the second phase of the proceedings, it will have to demonstrate that the forced divestiture of Meta's assets, such as Instagram or WhatsApp, would indeed restore competition in the market.