FTC lawsuit over Meta’s monopoly position and abuse of power may continue
The FTC’s antitrust complaint over Meta’s alleged abuse of its monopoly position is allowed to continue by a US judge. The same judge previously dismissed this complaint, but the FTC amended it. The committee wants WhatsApp and Instagram to be divested.
The US competition watchdog Federal Trade Commission says Meta has used illegal buy-or-bury practices to maintain its monopoly position. The platform would not have had enough ‘business acumen and technical talent’ to survive the move to mobile at the beginning of the last decade, so it chose to buy over competitors or eliminate competition.
By buying over competitors, the FTC is referring to the acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp in 2012 and 2014 respectively. By making competition impossible, the FTC is again referring to Facebook Platform. This was an open platform for independent developers, who could easily use data from Meta users. After developers took advantage of this, Meta ‘abruptly’ changed the conditions that prevented competitors from being successful, the committee says.
With the antitrust complaint, the FTC wants Meta to appear in court and for the judge to order that Meta stop this behavior, pay damages and reverse or divest acquisitions such as Instagram or WhatsApp. The FTC previously sued Meta for abuse of power; last June, federal judge James Boasberg said this charge was “legally insufficient.” He therefore dismissed the charges, although he left the door open for a modified indictment.
The committee then amended the indictment and provided additional data and information, including the number of active users, with which the watchdog, in its own words, demonstrates that Meta has a monopoly position and abuses it. Boasberg now believes that the charges are better and that the lawsuit can continue, even though Meta again argued that the lawsuit should be dismissed.
Boasberg does not say that it has been proven that Meta indeed has a monopoly position and abuses it. The judge thinks it will be difficult for the committee to prove this, something that the FTC must now do in the lawsuit. Only the point about Facebook Platform is not allowed by the judge, since Meta stopped doing this in 2018. In a response to The Verge, Meta says that the acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp were good for competition and users, and says the company is going into the lawsuit with confidence.