Meta goes to trial to avoid a breakup

On Monday, Meta will face the Federal Trade Committee in a legal battle that can reshape the scene of social media.

Over the next two months, the United States government will spend that the company’s 2012 acquisition of Instagram and 2014 to acquire the possible WhatsApp threats to its domination. Meta, who got the name Facebook at the time, will defend by saying that he helped develop these acquisitions to large businesses used by billions of people while they face a lot of competition along the way. Senior CEO of the company, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg and former CEO Sherrill Sandberg, will witness during the trial in Washington, DC.

The same trial was a long time. It is based on a lawsuit It was presented under the first Trump administration And then It was modified by the Biden AdministrationSearching for exciting solutions such as large Meta mergers. It is the third American trial that tries to intensify large technology within two years, following the issue of the successful Ministry of Justice against the search for Google and the second pending a decision against its business in the field of advertising technology. It starts amid wide rethinking How should anti -monopoly laws apply to digital marketsWhich began years ago and developed into a popular movement from the two parties. But what it looks like in the shadow of the new Trump system in the air is somewhat in the air – the TROMP FTC chair bills itself as difficult for large technology, although a major part of its concentration is the moderate web platforms of the conservative accounts.

Before the trial, Meta made efforts to benefit from the Trump administration. Zuckerberg sat with other technology executives on Dais during the inauguration of President Donald Trump. Soon after, dead A lawsuit settled The president brought the ban on his novels after the January 6 rebellion. (Meta agreed to pay 25 million dollars, which the vast majority of which will go to financing the Trump presidential library.) In his announcement of the Meta program to end the Meta program, Zuckerberg announced that he “will work with President Trump to respond to governments all over the world” which “pays more censorship.”

Meanwhile, in recent weeks, Zuckerberg personally Trump pressure To drop the FTC suit. The agency’s head, Andrew Ferguson, recently He suggested that he will obey Such a matter of Trump. As of now, the case is still ready for trial on April 14. This stage of the case will help to determine whether Meta has violated the anti -monopoly law, and if it rules against the company, there will be a separate trial to determine how to address alleged damage, including, most likely, dismantling the company.

The essence of the FTC case is the claim that Meta is monopolizing the market illegally for “personal social networks services” through anti -competition acquisitions that are allegedly used to “neutralize” potential competitors. Judge James Pasperg FTC preliminary lawsuit Against Facebook in mid -2011, saying that the government did not provide sufficient facts to show monopolistic force. He also threw a parallel complaint filed by a large alliance from countries, saying that it could not challenge the acquisitions that were closed – and were cleared by FTC – several years ago.

But Boasberg finally allowed the Federal Trade Committee to reshape a modified complaint. consider Most of the updated issue of the government is strong enough to move forward, but it prevented some allegations about the interrelated operating policies on the Facebook platform. However, he warned that FTC “may face a long task on the way to prove its allegations.”

Now, the trial is scheduled to be highlighted by a long list of current and former prominent executives, including Zuckerberg, Sandberg, CTO Andrew Bosworth, CMO Alex Schultz and CPO Christ Cox. The current and former presidents of Instagram and WhatsApp are expected to witness. In addition, the court will hear from witnesses in competing social media companies such as Snap, Tiktok and Pinterest.

Rebecca Hau Elinsorh, a monopoly professor at Vanderbilt College of Law, believes that the Federal Trade Committee’s lawsuit “is one of the strongest technical cases that have been brought in the past five years.” The strength of the FTC case says primarily from evidence of Meta’s anti -competition intention behind the purchase of Instagram and WhatsApp, as she was told. freedom.

FTC A modified complaint He points to the 2012 letter written by Zuckerberg to CFO at the time about the purchase of startups on social media such as Instagram: “Companies are emerging but networks are founded, brands are already meaningful, and if they grow to a wide range, they may be very troubled for us.”

When it is now and the books I paid a billion dollars to InstagramThe image sharing application was only 30 million users, not revenues. Today, Instagram contains billions of users estimated To calculate more than half of the US advertising revenues in the United States this year. Billions of people are still using Facebook, but the social network has He has long struggled to attract younger users Like Instagram – a problem facing Zuckerberg, in an interesting way, It is especially focused on reform this year.

WhatsApp 450 million users when Facebook paid an amazing amount of $ 19.3 billion – the largest acquisition ever at the time – to buy it in 2014. Chat with WHATSAPP work accountsWill Cathcart, telling the employees recently at a comprehensive meeting. freedom.

For Meta, fighting forced separation of Instagram or WhatsApp is of existential importance. Instagram is a large -scale service company service, with millions of active creators. It is estimated that WhatsApp is estimated to be the most used correspondence in the world. Both applications are decisive surfaces for Meta Distribution of artificial intelligence assistantWhich sees Zuckerberg the following major technological battle. Although it allowed both applications to work independently of the rest of the definition early, their spinning now will be a technical challenge given the extent of the tangle of both applications with the broader infrastructure of the company.

Although the intention of Zuckerberg is behind the purchase of Instagram and WhatsApp cannot be legally to find a dead person responsible for breaking the anti -monopoly law, allensworth argues that it could serve as something from the equalizer if the judge feels prosperous between expert views in the market. She says that Mita, on the other hand, is likely to find her strongest arguments in attacking the government’s definition of the market. (This defense has been a major element in every anti -monopoly suit in recent years.)

The government must prove that Meta has a monopolistic force in a relevant market so that the judge can find it responsible for its illegal monopoly. The FTC’s chosen definition of “Personal Social Network papers” excludes services like LinkedIn and YouTube and even Tiktok – all of which argue Meta in a competition with it. Meta is also likely to offer a convincing argument about the role he played in making Instagram and WhatsApp the successful applications they are today.

However, the government has a benefit from momentum alongside it. Last year, the capital Judge Amit Mihat found that Google has an illegal monopoly In online search, you pave the way for other negative provisions against Big Tech. (Mahata will soon consider the arguments about the appropriate treatments in this case.)

“Finding responsibility in these cases puts the judge a little on one of the parties, because the criterion was long to find how companies are managed for their business, especially for finding in the case of large technology,” says Alinesworth. “Once one of the judges leaves this party, it is a little easier for the second judge to do so.”