Meta faces antitrust trial in Instagram, WhatsApp acquisition case

Meta antitrust case: Facebook owner Meta Platforms will face trial in April over the US Federal Trade Commission's allegations that the social media platform bought Instagram and WhatsApp to crush emerging competition, a judge in Washington said on Monday.

The FTC sued in 2020, during the Trump administration, alleging the company acted illegally to maintain a monopoly on personal social networks. Meta, then known as Facebook, overpaid for Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014 to eliminate nascent threats instead of competing on its own in the mobile ecosystem, the FTC claims.

However, Judge James Boasberg dismissed the case by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) almost a year later in 2021 that sought to unwind Meta's acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp. Additionally, the judge also dismissed an associated case by a group of state attorney generals against the company. While dismissing the case, Judge Boasberg had said that the FTC had insufficient evidence to prove its claim that Meta, then Facebook, acquired Instagram and WhatsApp in a bid to solidify its place in the market and quash competition.

"The FTC has failed to plead enough facts to plausibly establish a necessary element of all of its Section 2 claims —namely, that Facebook has monopoly power in the market for Personal Social Networking (PSN) Services,” Boasberg had said at the time, The Verge reported.

A year later, the agency filed the case again, which the federal judge allowed to proceed on the grounds that the arguments made by the FTC were more detailed than before.

Then earlier this month, Boasberg rejected Meta's argument that the case should be dismissed as it depends on an overly narrow view of social media markets. The lawsuit does not account for competition from ByteDance's TikTok, Alphabet's YouTube, X, and Microsoft's LinkedIn, Meta had argued.

Boasberg said that while the case should go forward to trial, "time and technological change pose serious challenges" to the FTC's market definition.

"The Commission faces hard questions about whether its claims can hold up in the crucible of trial. Indeed, its positions at times strain this country's creaking antitrust precedents to their limits," the judge said in the November 13 ruling.

Judge James Boasberg has set trial in the case for April 14.