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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: 0.195s | 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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jjallen ◴[14 Apr 25 21:31 UTC] No.43686547[source]▶
This implies that every horizontal acquisition is anti-competitive, does it not? If not I would love to read why not.
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1. henryfjordan ◴[14 Apr 25 21:48 UTC] No.43686688[source]▶
Yes, every horizontal acquisition is anti-competitive.

Antitrust violations are a higher bar, you must improperly flex your dominant market position to violate the law. For that the government would have to show that FB offered an unreasonable price that nobody sane would match or that they threatened to cut off Insta links from FB if they didn't sell, something like that.