A long-awaited trial between Meta and the Federal Trade Commission kicks off on April 14th. Over about two months, DC District Court Judge James Boasberg will hear arguments about whether Facebook illegally monopolized the market for personal social networking services through its 2012 and 2014 acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp.
The FTC first brought the case in late 2020, and while it was initially thrown out by the judge, he let an amended version move forward because the government had beefed up details about why Meta is allegedly a monopoly. This phase of the trial will help the judge determine if Meta is liable for breaking antitrust laws. If he finds it is, he’ll later rule on how its harms should be remedies — including potentially by breaking it up.
The Meta trial is the third trial seeking to break up a tech monopoly in recent years, following the Justice Department’s two separate cases against Google over its search and ad tech businesses. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has personally lobbied President Donald Trump to try to avoid the trial.
Read below for all of our updates on the case.
-
We’re at the courthouse where Meta is facing its existential antitrust trial.I’m here with my colleague Alex Heath at the federal courthouse in Washington, DC where the Federal Trade Commission and Meta are set to lay out their opening arguments beginning at 9:30 AM Eastern Time. Meta is fighting charges that it illegally monopolized a subset of the social media market through its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp years ago. We’ll keep you updated with the most notable news throughout the day.
-
On Monday, Meta will face the Federal Trade Commission in a legal fight that could reshape the social media landscape.
Over the next two months, the US government will make its case that the company’s 2012 acquisition of Instagram and 2014 acquisition of WhatsApp squashed potential threats to its dominance. Meta, which went by the name of Facebook at the time, will defend itself by arguing that it helped grow those acquisitions into large businesses used by billions of people while facing plenty of competition along the way. The company’s senior executives, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg and former COO Sheryl Sandberg, are expected to testify during the trial in Washington, DC.
-
Federal Trade Commission Chair Andrew Ferguson has refused to commit to resisting President Donald Trump if he ordered the agency to drop its antitrust suit against Meta, saying he would “obey lawful orders” and calling the scenario “a hypothetical.” His comments, made at a tech policy event in Washington, DC, followed a session where Ferguson reaffirmed his belief that independent regulatory agencies are “not good for a democracy.”
Ferguson appeared at an antitrust-focused event hosted by Y Combinator on Wednesday, branded as the “Little Tech Competition Summit.” The FTC is set to begin its blockbuster anti-monopoly trial against Meta in just a couple of weeks, making a case that — in an extreme scenario — could break up the company. Yet Trump has proven willing to pardon allies or test legal bounds to support them. Ferguson has pledged strong fealty to him, declaring last month that Trump “is the chief executive and is vested with all the executive power in our government,” including the power to remove commissioners.
-
A federal judge says the US Federal Trade Commission can proceed with an antitrust lawsuit against Meta, formerly known as Facebook, after dismissing the suit last year.
District of Columbia Judge James Boasberg said in an opinion released today that the FTC’s first complaint had “stumbled out of the starting blocks.” But a revised version, Boasberg said, makes the same arguments with facts that are “far more robust and detailed than before.” As a result, he’s denying Meta’s motion to dismiss and allowing the case to proceed, although he states that the agency “may well face a tall task down the road in proving its allegations.”
-
On Monday, a US District Court dealt a huge blow to the federal government’s antitrust case against Facebook by dismissing a complaint filed against the company by the Federal Trade Commission. The lawsuit, filed late last year, sought to unwind Facebook’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp. The judge also dismissed an associated case filed by a group of state attorneys general.
In its initial complaint, the FTC alleged that Facebook violated federal antitrust laws by purchasing a would-be competitor in the social media market. But in his decision to dismiss the complaint Monday, Judge James E. Boasberg wrote that the FTC offered insufficient evidence for its central claim — that Facebook wields monopoly power.
-
On Wednesday, New York Attorney General Letitia James announced a massive antitrust lawsuit against Facebook, claiming the social media giant has harmed competition by buying up smaller companies like Instagram and WhatsApp to squash the threat they posed to its business. Forty-seven other state and regional attorneys general are joining the suit.
The lawsuit centers on Facebook’s acquisitions, particularly its $1 billion purchase of Instagram in 2011. In addition to its acquisition strategy, the attorneys general allege that Facebook used the power and reach of its platform to stifle user growth for competing services.