"A federal court has ended the Federal Trade Commission's bid to click "undo" on its previous approvals of Meta's of Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions, with Judge James E. Boasberg holding that the FTC failed to prove that Meta holds an illegal monopoly on social networking. Tuesday's opinion for the US District Court for the District of Columbia followed years of bipartisan litigation driven by regulators' angst over earlier green lights granted to Facebook's 2012 purchase of Instagram for $1 billion and its 2014 acquisition of WhatsApp for $16 billion."
"Boasberg rejected that argument in his 89-page opinion, essentially concluding that personal social networking as defined by the FTC died from the combined choices of Meta and its users. "The landscape that existed only five years ago when the Federal Trade Commission brought this antitrust suit has changed markedly," he writes at the opening of the opinion. "While it once might have made sense to partition apps into separate markets of social networking and social media, that wall has since broken down.""
A federal court dismissed the FTC's attempt to reverse approvals of Meta's Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions after finding insufficient proof of an illegal monopoly in social networking. The litigation stemmed from bipartisan concerns over Facebook's 2012 Instagram and 2014 WhatsApp purchases and a breakup suit first filed in 2020 and amended in 2021. Plaintiffs alleged a strategy of buying or burying rival innovators in personal social networking distinct from platforms like TikTok and YouTube. The judge concluded that personal social networking as defined by the FTC has eroded through combined choices of Meta and users, noting convergence between social networking and social media.
Read at PCMAG
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]