{"id":24348,"date":"2025-04-14T20:39:52","date_gmt":"2025-04-14T20:39:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/?p=24348"},"modified":"2025-04-14T20:39:52","modified_gmt":"2025-04-14T20:39:52","slug":"meta-had-monopoly-power-after-buying-rival-apps-ftc-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/?p=24348","title":{"rendered":"Meta had \u2018monopoly power\u2019 after buying rival apps, FTC says"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> \n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free<\/p>\n<p class=\"article__content-sign-up-topic-description\"><span>Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe class=\"article__content-sign-up-iframe close\" scrolling=\"no\" id=\"signUpIframe\" data-prev-url=\"\/register\/in-article-sign-up?ft-content-uuid=4ce636d2-8438-4a68-821b-74dc7a150d52\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<div id=\"article-body\">\n<p>Meta\u2019s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp helped give it \u201cmonopoly power\u201d, the US Federal Trade Commission told a court on Monday at the start of a blockbuster trial that could force the $1.5tn tech giant\u2019s break-up.<\/p>\n<p>The case before a Washington district court is expected to give the clearest signal yet about the Trump administration\u2019s stance on antitrust policy \u2014 and its appetite to take on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/big-tech\" data-trackable=\"link\">Big Tech<\/a>. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>FTC lawyer Daniel Matheson argued in his opening statement that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/42e05de2-04e3-4408-b603-2f9df9c8c22c\" data-trackable=\"link\">Meta<\/a> stymied competition from Instagram and WhatsApp by buying them in 2012 and 2014 for $1bn and $19bn respectively. <\/p>\n<p>Meta had since built \u201cmonopoly power\u201d, Matheson argued, with 85 per cent market share in time spent on its apps, according to the regulator\u2019s analysis.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cInstagram could hurt us meaningfully\u201d and was \u201cpretty threatening to us\u201d, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said in a 2012 email presented as evidence by the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/stream\/16817525-f0c8-42ab-95b1-f6ed54220a49\" data-trackable=\"link\">FTC<\/a> of his intentions to adopt a \u201cbuy-or-bury\u201d strategy.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Ahead of the WhatsApp deal, Zuckerberg in 2013 warned the messaging app could \u201ctip markets like the US where SMS is still the primar[y] platform\u201d, James Boasberg, the district judge overseeing the case, heard.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Meta knew that the transactions would allow it to build a \u201cmoat\u201d protecting it from other challengers, Matheson said.<\/p>\n<p>If found guilty, Meta could be compelled to unwind its acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram, depending on the remedies sought by the FTC in the trial\u2019s second phase.<\/p>\n<p>The trial comes as Zuckerberg \u2014 who once banned Donald Trump from Facebook \u2014 has sought to draw closer to the US president, regularly visiting the White House and relaxing Meta\u2019s content policy rules. <\/p>\n<p>Earlier this month, Zuckerberg appears to have lobbied to secure a settlement between Meta and the FTC to avoid a trial.<\/p>\n<p>The court case also marks the first significant test for Big Tech enforcement under Andrew Ferguson, Trump\u2019s FTC chair who was in the courtroom on Monday. He has made clear his plan to crack down on the industry, which he has accused of censorship. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Zuckerberg himself took the stand on Monday afternoon, while Meta\u2019s former chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg and rival leaders at TikTok, Snap and Google\u2019s YouTube are also expected to testify.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Matheson argued that Meta\u2019s anti-competitive conduct had harmed consumers, pointing to \u201cmassively increased\u201d advertising on Facebook and Instagram, as well as Meta\u2019s \u201csignificant privacy failures over time\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>He also accused Meta of trying to prevent Instagram\u2019s fast growth to avoid Facebook\u2019s \u201cnetwork collapse\u201d, according to a confidential email written by Zuckerberg in 2018 and presented to the court.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019d just keep it running. Insurance,\u201d the Meta boss said of Instagram in 2012. Meta has said he did not mean to starve Instagram of resources.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Meta\u2019s lawyer Mark Hansen said the company had \u201cno monopoly\u201d and had never been \u201cinsulated\u201d from competition.<\/p>\n<p>The \u201cmisguided\u201d lawsuit \u201cstrains this country\u2019s creaking antitrust precedents to their limit\u201d, Hansen said.<\/p>\n<p>The Meta lawyer also disputed the market share presented by the FTC, saying Meta\u2019s share of time spent by users on its apps dropped to less than 30 per cent when TikTok and YouTube were taken into account.<\/p>\n<aside aria-labelledby=\"aside-label\" class=\"n-content-recommended--single-story n-content-recommended--inset\" data-component=\"recommended\">\n<p class=\"n-content-recommended__title\">Recommended<\/p>\n<div class=\"o-teaser o-teaser--article o-teaser--small o-teaser--stacked o-teaser--has-image js-teaser\" data-id=\"6bada663-f220-4d87-825a-3d770ce3af79\">\n<div class=\"o-teaser__image-container js-teaser-image-container\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/6bada663-f220-4d87-825a-3d770ce3af79\" data-trackable=\"image-link\" data-trackable-context-story-link=\"image-link\" tabindex=\"-1\" aria-hidden=\"true\"><\/p>\n<div class=\"o-teaser__image-placeholder\" style=\"aspect-ratio:2493\/1402\"><\/div>\n<p><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p>Arguing TikTok does not compete with Instagram \u201cmakes no sense\u201d, Hansen added, pointing to jumps in Facebook and Instagram users when TikTok went temporarily dark in January.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Meta improved Instagram\u2019s and WhatsApp\u2019s quality, Hansen added, pushing user numbers up dramatically since their acquisitions while keeping the services free. <\/p>\n<p>Antitrust experts have argued that the FTC faces an uphill battle in the case, given judge Boasberg initially dismissed a first complaint on the grounds that it was \u201clegally insufficient\u201d before accepting a refiled case in 2022. <\/p>\n<p>The regulator first sued Meta (then Facebook) more than four years ago, during Trump\u2019s first presidency.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/4ce636d2-8438-4a68-821b-74dc7a150d52\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":24349,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tech","cs-entry","cs-video-wrap"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24348\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}