Three people were aware of the issue that Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, pressed President Trump and his assistants to resolve a lawsuit against federal monopoly against his company, which is scheduled to be tried on April 14.
Mr. Zuckerberg made several trips to the White House and Mar Lago to discuss the matter, along with other issues, two people, who were not allowed to reveal special talks. Recently, the White House visited Wednesday morning.
The Federal Trade Committee filed a lawsuit against Mita in 2020, during the first period of Mr. Trump, accused of the suffocating competition by purchasing young startups such as Instagram and WhatsApp and preventing them from becoming full work. Meta can solve the lawsuit with a settlement. It is not clear whether Mr. Zuckerberg’s efforts have prompted the Trump administration to think about the settlement.
Andy Stone, a Meta spokesman, who also owns Facebook, said the company “meets regularly with policy makers to discuss issues that affect competitiveness, national security and economic growth.”
White House immediately had no comment, FTC rejected the comment. The details of the meetings were I mentioned Earlier by the Wall Street Journal.
In a lawsuit, FTC claimed that Meta had violated the Anti -monopoly law by obtaining young competitors and depriving consumers from alternative social media platforms. FTC has argued that Meta purchased for the year 2012 for the Instagram photo sharing site for a billion dollars and the 2014 Correspondent for the WhatsApp application for $ 19 billion should not be approved.
The company has sought to “buy or bury creators who threaten to break up Facebook in the new mobile phone”, FTC said in its complaint.
Meta denied obtaining Instagram and WhatsApp to kill the competition, and she said it has invested extensively in developing innovations for applications. Meta also said that she continues to face intense competition from her competitors such as Tiktok, YouTube, Snap and IMESSAGE.
Instagram and WhatsApp have proven to be elderly. Instagram has become an essential part of Meta, as it has achieved billions of annual revenue. WhatsApp has decreased size to two billion users, and It started to achieve great revenues For meta.
Federal judge He abolished the anti -monopoly box In 2021, it was soon alive After FTC added more evidence and analysis to support its claims.
The trial is now scheduled to start in less than two weeks. The trial is likely to be characterized by a certificate of prominent executives in Meta, including Mr. Zuckerberg; Sherrill Sandberg, former operations director; Kevin Systrom, one of the Instagram founders.
Two people familiar with the issue said that META executives are preparing extensively for trial for several months, and they are closely working with the external lawyer if they are called to given their testimony.
Mr. Zuckerberg’s visits to the White House are part of an attempt to improve a dead relationship with the government, specifically Mr. Trump, who suspected in the past. In December, Mita announced it was 1 million dollars donated Mr. Trump’s opening fund. Mr. Zuckerberg Joel Kaplan, CEO of Republicans and long access, promoted to become the head of global public policy and deepen relations with the Trump administration.
