Facebook Parent Meta platforms are pending on Monday with a high test procedure in Washington by building an illegal monopoly for social media on Monday by issuing billions of dollars for the acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp in one case in which American antitrust invoices are trying to take off the business.
The acquisitions were aimed at eliminating competitors that could threaten the status of Facebook as a contact point for social media platform for users to connect with friends and family, claims the US Federal Trade Commission. The case submitted the case in 2020 during the first term of US President Donald Trump.
The FTC is trying to restructure or sell parts of its business. This means that if the Commission is successful, Meta Instagram and WhatsApp could be picked up to become their own units again.
In a blog post on Sunday, Jennifer Newstead, Chief Legal Officer from Meta, described the case weak and a deterrent for technical investments.
“It is absurd that the FTC is trying to destroy a great American company, at the same time trying to save Tikok in Chinese property,” she wrote.
The case represents an existential threat to META, which, according to some estimates, brings about half of his US advertising revenue from Instagram and also gives the public the first real level of how strongly the new Trump administration will make its promises to adopt Big Tech.
Meta has regularly made overtures since his election. The republicans of the content mix the censorship and donated 1 million US dollars for Trump’s inauguration. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, has visited the White House several times in the past few weeks.
US President Donald Trump has increased a record of company donations for his inauguration, of which millions of CEOs of large technology companies such as Google, Apple, Amazon and Meta were donated. Andrew Chang explains the change in Trump’s relationships with these industry leaders since his first term and the symbolism of her proximity to the president. Pictures of Getty Images, Reuters and the Canadian press.
“The Trump-Vance-FTC could no longer be ready for this process,” said FTC spokesman Joe Simonson and added, “we are blessed with some of the country’s hard work and intelligent lawyers who work around the clock.”
WhatsApp and Instagram helped Facebook to move his business from desktop computers to mobile devices and, for younger generations, as rivals such as Snapchat (which it also tried, but failed, to buy) and Tikok.
However, the FTC has a close definition of the competitive market of META, except companies such as Tiktok, YouTube and Apple’s messaging service, from rival to Instagram and WhatsApp.
“The FTC already has the difficult task, regardless of whether it is trying to define a lot of power in this market 10 years or five years ago or five years ago or now or now today or now,” said Paul Swanson, a antitrust law for the Holland & Hart law firm.
“And I think this challenge has become more difficult over the years and we see more and more potential competitors in social media.”
Zuckerberg expects statements
Zuckerberg is expected to testify in the trial version, in which he will satisfy a question about the acquisition of Instagram Photo-sharing app in order to neutralize a potential Facebook competitor, and the concern was expressed that encrypted messaging service WhatsApp could develop into a social network.
Meta argued in court files that his Instagram purchases will benefit users in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014 and that Zuckerberg’s previous statements are no longer relevant, while the wild competition of Bytedance’s Tiktok, Google’s YouTube and Apple’s messaging app.
The way users spend time on social media and whether they consider the services to be interchangeable is the core of the case. Meta will refer to an increase in traffic on Instagram and Facebook during the short closure of Tiktok in the United States in January as proof of the competition according to court files.
The FTC claims that Meta has a monopoly on platforms that are shared with friends and family members, where the most important competitors in the USA Snapchat and Mewe, a tiny, privately focused social media app that was launched in 2016.
Platforms on which users send content to strangers based on common interests, such as X, Tiktok, YouTube and Reddit, are not interchangeable, the FTC has argued.
In a decision in November, the US district judge James Boasberg said that the FTC had enough evidence to advance, “the agency” asks “standing questions about whether its claims in the melting pot of the court hearing can adhere to”.
The attempt should extend until July. If the FTC wins, a second attempt would have to prove that measures such as the enforcement of Meta would restore the competition for the sale of Instagram or WhatsApp.
Instagram particularly valuable for meta
Losing Instagram in particular could prove to be catastrophic against Metas.
While META does not publish app-specific sales figures, the advertising company Emarketer predicts in December that Instagram would generate $ 37.13 billion this year, a little more than half of META.
Instagram also generates more income per user than any other social platform, including Facebook, according to Emarketer.
Front burner24:43The case against Google
The second of two major antitrust cases against Google against Google completed this week. At the beginning of this year, a judge found that the company had an illegal monopoly on the Internet search market. Now the US Ministry of Justice argues the same about its online advertising. All of this is part of a large increase in legal disputes against technology companies by the US government – Apple, Amazon and Meta are all exposed to similar cases. What is behind this advance to keep these companies now? Would suggested funds actually make a difference? And will the momentum survive the transition to a second Trump presidency? Paris Marx – Author of the Tech -Newsletter Disconnect and moderator of the Podcast Tech will not save us – everything breaks away. For transcripts from Front Burner please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts (https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts)
So far, WhatsApp has only contributed an insight into the overall turnover of META, but it is the company’s largest app in terms of daily users and increases the efforts to make money with tools such as chatbots. Zuckerberg said such “Business Messaging” services are likely to drive the next growth of the company.
The case is one of five in which the Ministry of Justice of the FTC and the US Ministry of Justice accuses large technology companies to maintain illegal monopolies.
Amazon and Apple are both sued, and the Google from Alphabet is confronted with two lawsuits, including one in which a test version starts next week with the government offering to force Google to sell its Chrome browser.
