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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: 0.258s | 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. megaman821 ◴[14 Apr 25 21:41 UTC] No.43686628[source]▶
Can you show me something from that time that shows this was the dominate sentiment? Because I remember everyone laughing the Facebook would pay so much for such a simple app.
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2. henryfjordan ◴[14 Apr 25 21:44 UTC] No.43686652[source]▶
here's a Techcrunch article from the time: https://techcrunch.com/2012/04/09/facebook-to-acquire-instag...

> Last year, documents for a standalone Facebook mobile photo sharing app were attained by TechCrunch. Now it seems Facebook would rather buy Instagram which comes with a built-in community of photographers and photo lovers, while simultaneously squashing a threat to its dominance in photo sharing.

3. doctorpangloss ◴[14 Apr 25 21:45 UTC] No.43686662[source]▶
Sherman Antitrust Act fits on a single sheet of paper. Does the statute say anything about the sentiments of the blogs you read?