More from FTC v. Meta: the antitrust battle over Instagram and WhatsApp
The FTC is pointing to internal messages from 2011 where Zuckerberg complained that the company was moving too slow on its Facebook Camera app while Instagram was growing rapidly. It turns out, according to messages from other executives at the time, that this was in part because Facebook had interns working on the critical project, rather than more experienced engineers.
There are no fireworks yet. The government is working to elicit answers that might help it establish its view that the relevant part of the social media market Meta dominates is about connecting with friends. Zuckerberg testifies that engaging with friends’ posts is not as much a part of the experience as it was in the past, but concedes that as the service has grown, it’s still a big part of users’ experiences in absolute terms.
Semafor wrote about efforts from President Trump’s circle to encourage him to have a tougher spine against Meta’s lobbying efforts. One person, Mike Davis, seemed to hint about an Oval Office meeting last week on X.
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.
During Meta’s opening defense arguments against the FTC, it showed the court data from when TikTok was briefly offline before President Trump intervened to bring it back. While TikTok was down, Facebook usage spiked 20 percent and Instagram usage surged 17 percent.
This data is meant to poke holes in the FTC’s definition of the market for this antitrust case, since it excludes TikTok (and a bunch of other platforms) in favor of only Snapchat and, for some reason, MeWe. If Meta can convince Judge Boasberg that the FTC’s market definition isn’t right, the agency’s case falls apart.
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.
He’s also dismissive of the idea that Meta users pay for the services by consuming ads, saying they can just scroll past them.
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.
The FTC will present evidence, such as emails from CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the apps’ founders, and investors, allegedly showing that Instagram and WhatsApp would have grown without Facebook’s help, and that the company’s motive was to take potential rivals out of the market.
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.
We’ll keep you updated with the most notable news throughout the day.
