Meta Faces One other Antitrust Problem, with the FTC’s Case In opposition to the Firm Accredited for the Subsequent Stage

Meta is facing another antitrust investigation in the US, with the FTC today Access granted to file its lawsuit against the company over its Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions, which the FTC said were specifically aimed at eliminating competition in the marketplace.

Which, in some ways, likely they were, but at the same time, there are also strong arguments that Meta made both apps what they are as a result of its investment in each, using its resources and reach to increase both of them beyond a billion users. Now a court has to decide what the more substantial motivator is and whether Meta’s behavior violates antitrust law.

The judgment is a reversal of the decision of the Federal Court of Justice First finding in June last year, which resulted in the FTC’s lawsuit against Meta being dismissed because the FTC did not provide strong enough arguments to suggest that Meta acquired one or both of the apps as an anti-competitive move.

According to the June judgment:

“The FTC has failed to provide enough facts to plausibly support a necessary element of all of its claims in Section 2 – namely, that Facebook has monopoly power in the personal social networking service (PSN) market. ”

So it’s not that the court disputed the presumption that Meta (then Facebook) may have been anticompetitive, but the FTC case didn’t clearly show that it gave Meta a significant advantage in the market as there are various other social apps out there and platforms that have succeeded despite Meta’s efforts.

The judge in that first instance gave the FTC the opportunity to resubmit their case, which has now led to this new ruling in their favor and opened the door for a new legal push that, if successful, could force Meta to use both WhatsApp and both. to sell Instagram, which turns them back into independent units.

Though that seems like a long shot at this point.

Anticipating such investigations, Meta has worked to reform its business and bring its various elements together, which would make it much more difficult to separate them if it were forbidden.

For the past three years it has been meta Merge the messaging backendto facilitate interoperability, which means that the messaging elements of Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp ultimately all work on the same system and can therefore no longer be operated separately.

Meta also has has changed its company namewhile it is too added clear, distinctive branding to all apps, another step aimed at bringing all of its services together into one connected entity.

Of course, each platform has worked separately before, so theoretically it could do this again. But it seems Meta has been working on solidifying its internal systems so there’s no easy way to break them all apart, which will likely be an important part of his legal defense.

Meta also has the advantage of time. It originally Acquired Instagram in 2012, and WhatsApp in 2014with both deals meeting all necessary regulatory requirements each time. Given that it has been a decade now, this will work in Meta’s favor as well, and it’s also worth noting that the judge dismissed one more element of the FTC’s complaint – that Meta changed its platform policies to include services for Hire competitors – because the problem is now too far in the past.

Time does not change the facts of Meta’s behavior, but again, Meta will no doubt argue that all of its acquisitions were approved by the required regulatory agencies, who assessed all potential antitrust concerns and found no reason to stop the process. And after a decade of development, it is now too late to revise the terms of past deals.

It seems like a pretty tense case, with a few clearly relevant points, but these are probably not enough to definitively prove that Meta was anticompetitive. In a way – well, really, the only way – Meta would actually be happy with TikTok’s presence at this point, because TikTok’s success shows that Meta has no monopoly control over the social media market while Google has a stake in it digital advertising large enough to counteract this element as well.

But maybe Meta’s had Try buying Snapchat had been successful, it would have been in a less defensible place. It’s no surprise that Meta slowed down its acquisition pace clearly lately.

There is still a long way to go and many, many pages of court documents and judgments to read, but at this point it is more likely that Metas Imperium will remain unchanged at the end of the trial.

However, it is interesting and relevant to note that the federal court even approved one such case, suggesting further consideration of similar technology purchases in the future.