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Meta antitrust trial kicks off in federal court

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431 points c420 | 1 comments | 14 Apr 25 13:18 UTC | HN request time: 0.254s | 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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unreal37 ◴[14 Apr 25 19:59 UTC] No.43685646[source]▶
The government is claiming that Facebook bought Meta and Whatsapp because it couldn't compete with them.

Is that illegal? I don't understand! Every company that buys another company buys it because it adds something to their business. It's a ridiculous claim.

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1. Retric ◴[14 Apr 25 20:04 UTC] No.43685704[source]▶
It’s an argument for how to break up the company not just a complaint about what happened. Companies that buy a supplier or customer frequently didn’t compete with that supplier so breaking them off wouldn’t break up the monopoly.

Whatsapp was purchased as a competition and therefore there’s a solid case for spitting the company along that line. Split off Instagram and things look even more competitive.