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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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1. Cthulhu_ ◴[15 Apr 25 09:02 UTC] No.43690553[source]▶
> When Facebook acquired it, Instagram was a photo sharing app that had 13 employees.

Sure, but it was a serious threat to Facebook with hordes of especially younger people moving away from FB in favor of more activity on Instagram, which at that time had evolved from "just" a photo making/sharing app to a social network.

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2. basch ◴[15 Apr 25 13:33 UTC] No.43692468[source]▶
No. Mobile Camera Apps were a threat to non mobile first facebook. ("Instagram is a photo service in a sea of other photo services.")

Any one of them could have taken off and eaten facebook's lunch. Instagram was the winner in a sea of camera apps because facebook threw unlimited resources into the hip app of the moment.