The FTC's Antitrust Suit Against Facebook Moves Forward

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) can move forward with its latest antitrust lawsuit against Meta, a US district judge ruled on Tuesday. The decision is a significant win for the regulator, which had seen its first complaint thrown out by Judge James Boasberg last June. Engadget reports: Per The Washington Post, Boasberg now says the agency can move forward with its complaint thanks to the "more robust and detailed" evidence it presented with its amended suit, which the FTC filed in August. "Although the agency may well face a tall task down the road in proving its allegations, the Court believes that it has now cleared the pleading bar and may proceed to discovery," the judge said.

In October, Meta asked the court to dismiss the suit, arguing the FTC had failed yet again to present a "factual basis for alleging monopoly power." The agency's amended complaint is approximately two dozen pages longer than its original one, but it puts forward many of the same arguments. Specifically, the FTC alleges Facebook used the acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp in 2012 and 2014 to secure its dominant position in the social media market.

Divestiture of Instagram & WhatsApp!!!

[beachmike]

At the very least, Meta ("Facebook") should be required to divest itself of Instagram and WhatsApp. Their terrible lack of privacy should be massively overhauled under court supervision.

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[Narcocide]

Mod parent up. This -1 is the result of a sock-puppet hit job.

Buying your compeititors out..

[Powercntrl]

Specifically, the FTC alleges Facebook used the acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp in 2012 and 2014 to secure its dominant position in the social media market.

..is part of capitalism. No one forced them at gunpoint to sell. Disney gobbled up Lucasfilm and Fox studios with barely a fart out of the FTC. The difference here is anyone can register their own domain and start competing with Meta if they desired, but it's incredibly expensive to start a movie studio.

Meta may have a large userbase, but they don't have a monopoly over any of the actual services that they offer. Sharing content with the internet? There's plenty of other places to do that (YouTube, Img

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[youngone]

Big companies gobbling up small companies is certainly part of capitalism, and mergers between companies can be a good thing.
The debate occurs when competition within markets is ended because no-one can compete with whichever entity is the largest in any given market. That seems to be what the FTC is arguing here.
Perhaps the FTC should be trying to have Disney broken up too.

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[phantomfive]

That's not the question. The question is whether or not "buying out competition" hurts consumers. And the answer is yes, a lot of times it can.

Also it's an antitrust case, not a monopoly case. There's a difference.

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[Powercntrl]

The question is whether or not "buying out competition" hurts consumers.

If it creates higher prices in the marketplace, yes. If prices remain unchanged but there’s now less choices, that’s just capitalism working as designed. Selling out to a larger competitor is a perfectly valid play, if it’s what the owners of the company wanted to do.

The FTC would have a great case for consumer harm if Meta was buying up free services and sticking a subscription fee on them. Or, as a example where the lack of completion really is harming consumers, how eBay keeps jackin

Don't get me wrong...

[Chameleon Man]

Don't get me wrong, Facebook, or rather social media as a whole, needs regulation, but when it comes to antitrust...Facebook is not the first tech giant I think of.