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Meta antitrust trial kicks off in federal court

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431 points c420 | 3 comments | 14 Apr 25 13:18 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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henryfjordan ◴[14 Apr 25 19:16 UTC] No.43685057[source]▶
> "The FTC's lawsuit against Meta defies reality. The evidence at trial will show what every 17-year-old in the world knows: Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp compete with Chinese-owned TikTok, YouTube, X, iMessage and many others," Meta spokesperson Chris Sgro said in a statement.

Everyone knew at the time that Facebook bought Instagram because it threatened Facebook's dominance, and hindsight shows that exactly that happened. There's a huge swath of people that dropped off FB and now use Insta, but Meta owns both. It was a great move but it was absolutely anti-competitive at the time.

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1. ceejayoz ◴[14 Apr 25 19:50 UTC] No.43685515[source]▶
They're also directly behind some of the anti-TikTok push; again, trying to kneecap their competition.

https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/report-facebook-hi...

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2. wikipedia ◴[14 Apr 25 20:12 UTC] No.43685804[source]▶
Over the last ~3 years I've been passively following the negative PR campaign against TT by Meta; a lot of the outrage felt a bit manufactured, specifically the outlandish claims like the 'slap a teacher challenge' which, upon investigation, didn't actually exist [0]

[0] https://www.vice.com/en/article/slap-a-teacher-tiktok-challe...

https://archive.ph/ERLFo - Facebook paid Targeted Victory, a PR firm, to malign TikTok

https://archive.ph/wYuvL - A whistleblower’s power: Key takeaways from the Facebook Papers

https://archive.ph/rWDA4 - Mark Zuckerberg says TikTok is a threat to democracy, but didn't say he spent 6 months trying to buy its predecessor

https://archive.ph/H8SIk - Before Mark Zuckerberg Tried To Kill TikTok, He Wanted To Own It

https://archive.ph/liFKi - FACEBOOK’S PLAYBOOK TO BEAT COMPETITORS HAS HAD TO CHANGE WITH TIKTOK

https://archive.ph/9XSqi - Facebook Tries to Take Down TikTok

https://archive.ph/LWTHf - Reuters: Factbox: Facebook and TikTok's fraught history - quick look

https://archive.ph/H3dfJ - Facebook Parent Company Defends Its PR Campaign to Portray TikTok as Threat to American Children

3. mupuff1234 ◴[14 Apr 25 21:05 UTC] No.43686338[source]▶
Plus they tried to buy other companies that they thought posed a threat (snap, etc?)