Gety picturesMETA, coach of Meta, took the position of witnesses in a parametering trial to combat monopoly to defend his company against allegations that his company is running social media monopoly.
His testimony is part of a case filed by the Federal Trade Committee for the first time (FTC) in 2020 in the last days of the first Trump administration.
American competition monitoring claims that META has underestimated the market through the acquisitions of Instagram photo sharing application in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014.
FTC seeks to dismantle Meta by forcing Spinoff from Instagram or WhatsApp. Meta says there is a lot of competition on social media, including applications like Tiktok, X and YouTube.
Mr. Zuckerberg was wearing a dark suit and a light blue tie, and was the first witness in the case on Monday in a federal court in Washington, DC. The experiment is expected to last for two months.
“It seems that Instagram is growing quickly.”
The following year, I send another email, saying that the company “so far is that we do not even understand to what extent we are … I am concerned that it will take a long time to catch a knee.”
On the platform, Mr. Zuckerberg defended his statements, describing the emails “relatively early” about buying the app. He added that Meta has improved Instagram over the years.
ReutersMr. Zuckerberg also said he wanted to buy Instagram because of camera technology, not because of its social network. He is expected to continue his testimony on Tuesday.
FTC says the company increases the payment when getting Instagram for one billion dollars and WhatsApp for $ 19 billion as a defensive step.
“They decided that the competition was very difficult and it will be easier to buy their competitors than competing with them,” FTC, a FTC lawyer, said in his opening statement in the trial of Monday.
Meta replied that the lawsuit from FTC, which was originally reviewed and agreed to both of these acquisitions, was “misleading”.
The company’s lawyer, Mark Hansen, argued that Meta “acquired Instagram and WhatsApp to improve and develop it alongside Facebook.”
FTC lawyer was martyred in the 2012 memo of Mr. Zuckerberg, in which he discusses the importance of “Instagram”.
Mr. Matthesson called this message “Smoking Gun”.
On the other hand, Meta said that the purchases made the consumer experience better.
“The seizures were not found for improvement and growth,” Meta said on Monday said, and they should not be found here.
Dead Last year, she had 3.27 billion active users per day through her products.
Instagram was expected to explain more than half of Meta’s advertising revenues in the United States in 2025.
Meta has made regular initiatives for Trump since his election.
The company contributed a million dollars in the Trump opening fund, and former Trump advisor Dina Powell McC Corcmond added the Ultimate Fighting (UFC), Trump’s ally, to Meta’s Board of Directors this year.
The company also announced in January that it was retracting the contents of the content that Republicans said the Republicans were wearing censorship.
It also agreed to pay $ 25 million from Trump to settle a lawsuit for suspending his accounts after the American Capitol riots in 2021.
Mr. Zuckerberg has also visited the White House in recent weeks.
Meta coach Trump personally pressed the case, according to the Wall Street Journal.
When I asked the British Broadcasting Corporation to confirm this report, Meta avoided this question, but he said in a statement: “It challenges FTC claims against Meta reality.”
FTC V Meta begins as another case to combat monopoly – USA V Google – volunteer.
The Ministry of Justice won the first phase of this case last summer when Judge Amit Mihata found that Google monopolized online search, with a market share of about 90 %.
Last month, government lawyers reiterated a request to have been submitted during the Biden administration that the Google Monopher Court.
Laura Phillips Surir, a professor participating in the Business Law at the University of Georgia, says the FTC case against Meta will be more striking to prove it.
“I think they have a real arduous battle,” Mrs. Philips Sayer said of FTC.
“They have a long way before looking at Instagram or WhatsApp.”
This is because of the online search, there is more competition in the field of personal network services in which Meta works, Ms. Philips Sayer said.
Amazon and Apple also face anti -monopoly claims by the perpetrators.
