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Meta antitrust trial kicks off in federal court

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431 points c420 | 2 comments | 14 Apr 25 13:18 UTC | HN request time: 0s | 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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Aunche ◴[14 Apr 25 23:59 UTC] No.43687599[source]▶
> Everyone knew at the time that Facebook bought Instagram because it threatened Facebook's dominance, and hindsight shows that exactly that happened.

This is something that people can claim to know from hindsight. When Facebook acquired it, Instagram was a photo sharing app that had 13 employees.

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chasing ◴[15 Apr 25 00:05 UTC] No.43687645[source]▶
The conversations at that time were definitely about how Instagram had the heat that Facebook was losing. I felt there was no question that they were neutralizing a competitor.

(WhatsApp only had, like, 50 employees when FB bought it for $19B, as a bit of evidence that headcount isn’t necessarily a measure of value.)

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dmix ◴[15 Apr 25 00:35 UTC] No.43687823[source]▶
If they bought both Instagram and Snapchat it would have been neutralizing competition. Instagram acquisition was just a business staying relevant after a youth market grew up and soured on them while the next younger ones wanted something else cooler designed for 100% around mobile.

I believe intention and behaviour matters much more to antitrust than simply continuing to be a dominant market leader by smartly staying on top of what the public wants. Google search doing horizontal integration into Android and Chrome to cut off competition's market entry points at lower levels is far more plausible antitrust narrative IMO.

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Larrikin ◴[15 Apr 25 02:49 UTC] No.43688551[source]▶
They tried to buy Snapchat multiple times and the guy refused after seeing how much Facebook valued Instagram and thought he could get more than a billion.
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dmix ◴[15 Apr 25 03:44 UTC] No.43688796[source]▶
Yes it was between the two if I remember correctly. If they bought both it'd be crossing into near total monopoly, at least before Tiktok took off. But they are pretty far from that now IMO. At least in terms of competition from tons of other services. It's possible they did other shady things outside of that.
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Larrikin ◴[15 Apr 25 03:48 UTC] No.43688812{3}[source]▶
They were trying to get both, there was no contingency of getting one and not getting the other. Snapchat just refused to be sold for the same price.
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1. dmix ◴[15 Apr 25 04:08 UTC] No.43688896{4}[source]▶
Right I looked it up. They bought Instagram in 2012 and tried to buy Snapchat a year later.

Since it didn't happen it's pretty moot to the discussion. M&As with massive market consolidation like that get challenged all the time in courts so it's hard to say what would have happened then.

FTC investigated the Instagram purchase in 2012 and chose not to interfere.

So failed acquisition doesn't make buying Instagram inherently an anticompetitive move, just maybe can be spun as their strategy at the time, but a decade later the market still has plenty of players so it will be a tough case to make. Although even a failed case gives the government leverage over Meta with threats of future ones so they might not care.

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2. jb1991 ◴[15 Apr 25 06:24 UTC] No.43689585[source]▶
Since the discussion is entirely about their motivation in buying Instagram, it’s certainly not moot at all. They wanted to have a monopoly and remove the competition. That was the motivation.

The FTC investigation specifically had a condition that they would reevaluate the acquisition in coming years. This was widely expected to be done, and everyone knew about it at the time of the acquisition.