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Meta antitrust trial kicks off in federal court

(www.axios.com)
431 points c420 | 6 comments | 14 Apr 25 13:18 UTC | HN request time: 0.656s | source | bottom
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paxys ◴[14 Apr 25 19:40 UTC] No.43685386[source]▶
I don't understand the FTC's strategy here. Their entire case hinges on the fact that the judge will accept that Instagram, WhatsApp, Snapchat and MeWe (?) are direct competitors of Facebook in the "personal social networking" space while TikTok, YouTube, X, iMessage and all the rest aren't. Unsurprisingly that is what Meta's legal team is spending all of its efforts debating. I really can't see the judge allowing such a cherry-picked definition of what Facebook's market is.
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whatshisface ◴[14 Apr 25 20:31 UTC] No.43685979[source]▶
The definition of a trust isn't a business with no competitors. In fact, a business with no competitors is legal. Antitrust law limits "anti-competitive actions," which are possible even for commodity producers in an efficient market.
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the_clarence ◴[14 Apr 25 23:03 UTC] No.43687242[source]▶
Exactly! So what is anti competitive here?
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stackskipton ◴[14 Apr 25 23:43 UTC] No.43687485[source]▶
Facebook knew that Instagram was up and coming and instead of competing, it just bought it.

You can read more about initial complaint and following the trial here: https://www.bigtechontrial.com/p/zuckerberg-on-the-stand-the...

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1. DecentShoes ◴[15 Apr 25 03:19 UTC] No.43688698[source]▶
Isn't this the purpose of most acquisitions?
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2. callc ◴[15 Apr 25 03:43 UTC] No.43688790[source]▶
If the purpose of an acquisition is to quash competition that is bad. Monopolies are bad.

Another purpose of acquisitions is to acquire a new capability that you could not do in house that you do not already compete on.

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3. dmix ◴[15 Apr 25 03:51 UTC] No.43688825[source]▶
Instagram was and still is in a highly competitive market. Previously it was Snapchat at the time and now it's Tiktok. Not to mention YouTube shorts, Reddit, Twitter, and every other service focused on video and pictures.

I don't think any social media consumer is lacking choice.

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4. callc ◴[15 Apr 25 04:40 UTC] No.43689038{3}[source]▶
Regardless of how much “choice” there is in a market, FB made an anti-competitive play. Now we all have n-1 choices.

The question of whether society should allow companies to perform anti-competitive actions should not be “will we be left with enough choices?”, but should be “is this an anti-competitive action?”

5. reaperducer ◴[15 Apr 25 13:46 UTC] No.43692631[source]▶
Isn't this the purpose of most acquisitions?

No, it's not. It is not normal or usual. Not even in the tech industry.

6. blululu ◴[15 Apr 25 14:12 UTC] No.43692984[source]▶
A true accounting of board level corporate motivations is not available. The standard line is typically something like “we are acquiring our smaller rival to more effectively compete with our larger rival”. I.e “we are acquiring a small desktop publishing start up to compete with the largest cloud computing provider”. Or in this case: “we are acquiring a small photo sharing company to compete against Google/Youtube”.