> "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.<p>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.
Other articles posted about this:<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/14/technology/meta-antitrust-trial-ftc.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/14/technology/meta-antitrust...</a> (<a href="https://archive.ph/8wOPP" rel="nofollow">https://archive.ph/8wOPP</a>)<p><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/14/media/meta-ftc-trial/index.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/14/media/meta-ftc-trial/index.ht...</a><p><a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/13/meta-zuckerberg-ftc-washington-court-00288044" rel="nofollow">https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/13/meta-zuckerberg-ftc...</a><p>(I've omitted the HN links this time because there weren't any comments yet. Someday we're going to do proper URL bundling and karma sharing for cases like this, where multiple submitters post good articles on the same underlying story.)
I don't understand the FTC's strategy here. Their entire case hinges on the fact that the judge will accept that Instagram, WhatsApp, Snapchat and MeWe (?) are direct competitors of Facebook in the "personal social networking" space while TikTok, YouTube, X, iMessage and all the rest aren't. Unsurprisingly that is what Meta's legal team is spending all of its efforts debating. I really can't see the judge allowing such a cherry-picked definition of what Facebook's market is.
As someone who’s stuck with Whatsapp and no way out (friends and family won’t switch), I dearly hope for a split.<p>I do struggle to understand how we here casually lump tohether totally different platforms as comptetitors.<p>It’s not like I can use Youtube or Tiktok instead of Whatsapp with my family for direct and group discussion. Even X and Instagram would be a stretch, as their raison d’être is public social media and not instant messaging.<p>Sure the platforms have overlapping features, but you ain’t gonna use a knife insted of a spoon.
> Meta could have chosen to compete with then-upstart photo sharing app Instagram in 2012, a senior FTC official said on a call with reporters ahead of the trial, but instead it bought it, and did the same with WhatsApp.<p>This has a potentially very-chilling effect on acquisitions, which are a major source of liquidity for lots of secondary companies.
Shout out to <a href="https://www.bigtechontrial.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.bigtechontrial.com/</a> which covered Google Trial and is now covering Facebook trial.<p>Disclaimer: Matt Stoller is big on anti monopoly so he's in support of government in both cases but overall, his coverage is really good and more details than you will probably get from other outlets.
I do not understand what leg the FTC has to stand on in this case at all.<p>I know the company is quite unpopular, but from an objective legal standpoint I don't see how you can make an antitrust/anticompetitive argument here.
What's the argument exactly? What prevents competition from starting a new social network or a new messaging app?<p>Indeed there is a huge number of successful messaging apps (imessage, signal, telegram, wire, wechat, kakao) and social networks (tiktok, snapchat, linkedin, reddit)<p>I know we're supposed to hate on facebook but what exactly is anti competitive?
I think Whatsapp is the clearest possible case that can be made of any company? They violated the condition of not sharing user data with Facebook<p>Willing to listen to other opinions on other companies, but surely Whatsapp
Not a fan of Meta and I don't have IG, Facebook, WhatsApp etc.<p>However, even in 2012 or so when these acquisitions happened, Snapchat was a much bigger thing. And for me, Reddit was a much bigger thing than FB.<p>I think amongst the antitrust trials, this one is the weakest.
Regardless of where you land on Meta's ethics, this case feels like a high-stakes stress test for retroactive antitrust enforcement. If the FTC succeeds here, it basically rewrites the "finality" of M&A decisions in tech... and that'll ripple way beyond Meta.
What has actually changed in the last 13 years regarding Whatsapp? Video. And I believe that's the reason why anyone hasn't actually challenged them regarding messaging: you can build a similar application with similar features with a rather small group of people (not saying it's easy, but it's feasible). But handling those pentabytes of bandwith shared every day? Actually _promoting_ the use of DIY video as the preferred communication media? That's something you can't do as an small shop. And that's, I think, why you cannot compete.
I decided to quit Whatsapp, which in Latinamerica is quite an outrageous move: that application is the communication channel for EVERYTHING: all families, all schools, all neighborhoods. I did it because I think Meta's main metric is actually hostile to their users: they want as much of your time as they can get from you, and they'll use are sorts of psychological weaponry to keep you inside. They were actually vocal about it in the past. There's zero reason to trust them. But why is it that no one has come up with a true alternative (although props to Signal)? Well, there's the network effect, for sure. They also employ very good engineers. But I believe the true reason is scale: it didn't use to be that way, but infrastructure costs are now inmense.
I may be cynical but Zuck saw this happening and entirely shifted to appease current administration. Even having UFC CEO on board. No way they will breakup META.
I feel the spirit of antitrust being for the benefit of consumers has been lost with the recent round of actions. Virtually every action a corporation takes is “anticompetitive” because surely it wants to defeat the competition. That’s the whole point of capitalism. We shouldn’t be concerned until this is actually anti consumer. And it’s hard to prove consumer harm for free products that aren’t really necessary and have many alternatives.
This seems like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yukos" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yukos</a> lite So much for Zuck's white flags and ring-kissing.
I think the illegal monopoly claims are a bit out there given the range of offerings in the social network space. Are they arguing that Instagram specifically is a monopoly in photo-oriented social networking because X is mostly text and YouTube and TikTok is mostly video? I don't see any particular time you can point to where Facebook+Instagram+WhatsApp was a monoopoly in any sort of broad social networking space, especially not the WhatsApp part which competes with iMessage which is an absolute behemoth in terms of market share.
This trial is but a showcase for the berg zucker.<p>Legal proceedings focused on "social networks" and "browser market shares" and app stores. These are ridiculous, superficial, and meaningless.<p>If there was really such a thing as a monopoly on social networking, you would have to kick people off the networks, not just stop the companies operating them. What would change if instagram had to become its own company again? The same people would own it. And that is why antitrust is a joke, it does not prevent the true monopoly of who controls what.
<a href="https://youtu.be/cvVBY4QuA5w" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/cvVBY4QuA5w</a><p>I hope Mark issues a public statement that he is dropping his emergency arbitration against her and will allow her book to Publish. I get why he did it, but it didn't work and now it is hurting more than helping. There is no such thing as Bad PR --but an open wound is a different story. (I am on his side in that I don't neurotically hold people accountable for being dbags back in their 20s and early 30s when they aren't that person anymore...google for "brain development at 30" to see why.)<p>PS: Was at a startup that was wiped out by Instagram 4.3. This was after Mr. SnapEgo reportedly turned down a cool $1B and McAfee's lost son snapped up the technically troubled Vine (that Mr. FootInHisMouth should probably retool and rebrand as "X Prime").
So Mark Z's recent $20M "donation" to Trump's presidential library apparently wasn't enough. This would all be much easier for everyone if there was an official rate card and price list.
So there are two things you should always bear in mind about any action taken by the current administration:<p>1. Everything is for sale. Any laws, tariffs, regulations, etc that negatively affect your interests can be bought off. Pardons can be sold. Thanks for the Supreme Court, there is absolutely nothing illegal about the President doing this anymore; and<p>2. The courts are used to bend individuals and companies to the policy and personal interests of the president. Take Eric Adams's corruption case. The DoJ wanted to dismiss the case without prejudice so it could be re-filed. This threat of future prosecution was the point to keep Adams in line. The courts saw through this thinly-veiled influence peddling and dismissed the case with prejudice.<p>So Meta is being forced to kiss the ring. That means silencing content critical of the administration and allowing right-wing conspiracies and hate speech to spread unfettered.<p>I expect nothing to come of this because these cases all take a decade or more to filter through various appeals, remands back to the trial court, further appeals and so on. But it will absolutely influence how Meta's recommendation algorithms work.
Another scheme of the administration to blackmail a big company into submission. I'm not against sued a big company because of antitrust/monopoly but my fear is that Meta gets off the hook once Zuck jumps through Trump's hoops and sells out the customers to the new dictator.
Zuck waved the white flag, settled the frivolous Trump libel lawsuit, and made several trips to kiss Trump's ring - now he is getting skewered anyhow. Deliciously ironic.<p>“Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing.”<p>― Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment.
A recent HN article shows Facebook silenced Pro Palestine posts due to Israeli interference. The issue with Meta controlling so many social media outlets is control over information. A populace that is uninformed will welcome a master (and deserves one), and will look the other way when genocides and injustice take place in our world. The audience of HN is educated and unlikely to fall for misinformation. However, I have seen firsthand how anti-immigrant sentiments, racism and anti-muslim sentiment [1] can prosper when one man controls the flow of information, for they can steer public opinion in ways that are alien to our morals (and favors either their personal politics, their bottom dollar or other nefarious reasons). This is somewhat similar to the Sinclair family running identical stories on many TV stations they control to control narratives. However, Meta has much greater reach. Their role in allowing Russian interference in US elections for ad revenue has largely been forgotten, but Zuck played a role in spreading misinformation and allowing fake users (pretending to be Americans) to steer anger in the population, and allowed a foreign entity to spend their dollars favoring an American candidate (Election meddling). Ultimately, you can argue we must check our sources, but once again, HN is a small bubble. I know firsthand from Meta engineers that Facebook does practically nothing to stop Russian and Iranian threats and is in bed with the Israelis. I hope the FTC comes for their a--<p>[1] <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-facebooks-systems-promoted-violence-against-rohingya-meta-owes-reparations-new-report/" rel="nofollow">https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-faceb...</a>
Everyone is missing the point: facts don’t matter<p>What matters is: if Donald Trump wants to break up Meta just for fun, nothing can stop him and he will do it. Just for fun