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Meta antitrust trial kicks off in federal court

(www.axios.com)
431 points c420 | 2 comments | 14 Apr 25 13:18 UTC | HN request time: 0.412s | 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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paxys ◴[14 Apr 25 20:09 UTC] No.43685767[source]▶
If everyone indeed "knew at the time" then why did the FTC allow the acquisition to go through in a 5-0 vote?
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surge ◴[14 Apr 25 20:14 UTC] No.43685818[source]▶
This is what I don't get, the FTC is suing because the FTC allowed something to happen, when the platforms had even more dominance than they do now?

Kind of stinks of less than valid motivations based on the timing of bringing this up over a decade after the fact.

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1. wmf ◴[15 Apr 25 04:35 UTC] No.43689010[source]▶
Wasn't the FTC completely rebooted in 2021?
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2. bertil ◴[15 Apr 25 07:06 UTC] No.43689834[source]▶
That explains changes in priorities, but it does not make for great jurisprudence to have their unanimous decision revoked.

They could argue that the decision was made based on declarations that did not align with the private conversation that Zuckerberg had at the time, as those emails came out since.