Report from the Washington Post
In Brief – The bench trial pitting the FTC against Meta before US District Judge James Boasberg is finally underway in a lawsuit initiated in 2020 by the first Trump Administration. The regulator’s antitrust complaint alleges that Meta’s acquisitions of Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014 were used to illegally monopolize the social media market and that Meta should be forced to sell those platforms. Back in 2021, Judge Boasberg dismissed the original FTC complaint, but he gave the regulators an opportunity to improve their case and refile. They did, and the amended complaint has proceeded relentlessly since. However, Boasberg continues to express skepticism with the FTC’s case, noting in his decision to reject Meta’s motion for summary judgement that while the regulator met the “forgiving” standard to proceed to trial, “time and technological change pose serious challenges” to the FTC’s market definition.
Context – Defining markets is key in antitrust litigation. That is very much the case here. The FTC argues that Meta is the dominant “personal social networking” company whose top competitor is Snapchat. Their narrow platform market excludes social media giants like TikTok, YouTube, Reddit and LinkedIn. Meta has argued throughout that their business is as a digital advertising platform and that they compete with all those giant platforms for user attention and advertiser dollars. Meta’s continued transformation of Facebook and Instagram into platforms that operate more like TikTok, with its massive and disruptive growth, is the kind of change the judge was likely referring to. Whether the Trump Administration will accept the entreaties from Meta to settle the case short of a breakup will be a big milestone in judging how they will treat “Big Tech”. Meta has been among the most public in aligning with the new regime’s digital policies, especially on content moderation, but there is a very aggressive anti-Big Tech wing within the Trump Administration. A decision from Boasberg will likely take months and the Administration may believe their leverage in settlement talks will still grow for a while.