Meta antitrust trial kicks off in federal court

> Meta could have chosen to compete with then-upstart photo sharing app Instagram in 2012, a senior FTC official said on a call with reporters ahead of the trial, but instead it bought it, and did the same with WhatsApp.

This has a potentially very-chilling effect on acquisitions, which are a major source of liquidity for lots of secondary companies.

I'd kill for a chilling effect on acquisitions. Every single fucking time something I like gets acquired, it takes anywhere between a few months to a couple years before it is completely ruined. Maybe if we're lucky, Microsoft will acquire Discord and run it into the ground the way they did with Skype. (Then, we can all go back to IRC, right? ... Right, guys?)

Its more likely we like the things we like because they're still in their "Acquire users" phase, and haven't run out of VC funding yet. Once they they get acquired, they quickly transition to the "squeeze every penny out of those users" phase we all know and love.

> Once they they get acquired, they quickly transition to the "squeeze every penny out of those users" phase

Instagram had less than a tenth of its current user base when it was bought [1].

[1] https://time.com/4299297/instagram-facebook-revenue/