←back to thread

Meta antitrust trial kicks off in federal court

(www.axios.com)
431 points c420 | 1 comments | 14 Apr 25 13:18 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
Show context
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.

replies(19): >>43685508 #>>43685515 #>>43685646 #>>43685767 #>>43685806 #>>43685820 #>>43686547 #>>43686628 #>>43686655 #>>43687439 #>>43687599 #>>43688044 #>>43688162 #>>43688335 #>>43688415 #>>43689802 #>>43689816 #>>43690767 #>>43703847 #
paxys ◴[14 Apr 25 20:09 UTC] No.43685767[source]▶
If everyone indeed "knew at the time" then why did the FTC allow the acquisition to go through in a 5-0 vote?
replies(8): >>43685818 #>>43685857 #>>43685861 #>>43686018 #>>43686108 #>>43686238 #>>43686843 #>>43686925 #
1. miltonlost ◴[14 Apr 25 20:18 UTC] No.43685857[source]▶
Partly our regulatory system unfortunately was timid and defanged and philosophically approving of a lot of mergers in general (neoliberalism + Laissez Fair Conservatives). The FTC didn't do the discovery to get the smoking gun email of Zuckerburg saying how he was doing the buyout specifically to "neutralize a potential competitor," (as The New York Times reported).

To anyone on the side of anti-trust, it was clear even without that email as to how much Instagram and WhatsApp were growing, and thus Facebook was Standard Oiling.