Lauren Feiner

The FTC just called the Meta CEO as its first witness. The government has budgeted several hours for him to testify, so he’ll likely cover a lot of ground.

The company accuses the government of backing into a view of the social media market that makes it look like a monopoly, while ignoring robust competitors. It also charted how TikTok’s brief time offline in the US led users to flee to other apps, including its own. See for yourself.

Meta’s attorney Mark Hansen paints the government’s case as one comprised of made-up theories about how both the social media market and the law work. He accuses the government of ignoring TikTok’s massive role in social media by excluding it from its definition of the market that Meta allegedly monopolized.

Prior to buying those nascent apps in 2012 and 2014, Facebook recognized both as significant competition, Federal Trade Commission attorney Daniel Matheson argues to open the government’s case.

I’m here with my colleague Alex Heath at the federal courthouse in Washington, DC where the Federal Trade Commission and Meta are set to lay out their opening arguments beginning at 9:30 AM Eastern Time. Meta is fighting charges that it illegally monopolized a subset of the social media market through its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp years ago.

Mark Meador, a former staffer for Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), was confirmed to the Federal Trade Commission. He’ll join Republican Chair Andrew Ferguson and Republican commissioner Melissa Holyoak. Meanwhile, the two Democrats President Donald Trump attempted to fire from the commission are fighting for their jobs back. Under the law, no more than three commissioners can be from a single party.