FTC v. Meta: the antitrust battle over Instagram and WhatsApp – The Verge

Why is the Trump administration really appealing its Meta loss?

2026-02-05T10:07:45-05:00

After a federal judge ruled that Meta was not an illegal monopolist in a blow against the Federal Trade Commission, the agency issued what was in part a typical statement of disappointment. Another part of the statement was anything but: a political attack on the judge himself.

"The deck was always stacked against us with Judge [James] Boasberg, who is currently facing articles of impeachment," FTC spokesperson Joe Simonson said in a statement after Boasberg released his decision in November. Simonson appeared to reference articles filed by a Republican lawmaker after Boasberg issued rulings that were unfavorable to GOP lawmakers and the Tr …

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FTC says it will appeal Meta antitrust loss

2026-01-20T19:41:30-05:00

The Federal Trade Commission will appeal its loss in a landmark antitrust case against Meta, the agency announced Tuesday.

US District Court Judge James Boasberg ruled in November that the government failed to prove that Meta had an illegal monopoly over a subset of social networking services meant for connecting with friends and family online. Boasberg wrote that the government had an "uphill battle" in how it defined the market Meta allegedly dominated, a challenge exacerbated by the rise of TikTok and changes in the market over the five years between the FTC filing the case and it going to trial.

The FTC is asking the US Court of Appea …

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Meta is not a monopolist, judge rules

2025-11-18T15:38:22-05:00

Meta won a landmark antitrust battle with the Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday after a federal judge ruled it has not monopolized the social media market at the center of the case.

US District Court Judge James Boasberg wrote that Meta had not unfairly cornered a market on "personal social networking," a category that includes a narrow subset of social media apps including Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. The decision, which can be appealed by the FTC, means Meta will not immediately face demands to undo acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp.

Boasberg noted that he'd warned the FTC that it faced an "uphill battle" in defining the mar …

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Inside the courthouse reshaping the future of the internet

2025-10-06T16:02:21-04:00

The E. Barrett Prettyman Courthouse in Washington, DC.

The future of the internet will be determined in one building in Washington, DC - and for six weeks, I watched it unfold.

For much of this spring, the E. Barrett Prettyman Courthouse in downtown Washington, DC, was buzzing with lawyers, reporters, and interested onlookers jostling between dimly lit courtrooms that hosted everyone from the richest men in Silicon Valley to fired federal workers and the DOGE-aligned officials who terminated them. The sprawling courthouse, with an airy atrium in the middle and long, dark halls that spring from it, is where cases involving government agencies often land, and that meant it was hosting two of the …

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Meta’s antitrust defense wraps with one big claim: WhatsApp and Instagram couldn’t be better

2025-05-23T17:26:51-04:00

For five weeks, the Federal Trade Commission asked a federal judge to imagine a world where Instagram and WhatsApp flourished outside Meta's control instead of being acquired by the tech giant. In the sixth and final week of trial, Meta asked Judge James Boasberg to consider that actually, these apps might be as good as they can get.

Meta rested its case Wednesday after a brief four days in court (many of its witnesses were also called by the FTC, so it already had the chance to question them in prior weeks). In those final days, Meta called on WhatsApp cofounder Brian Acton and an early Instagram infrastructure executive to explain how Met …

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Did WhatsApp really need Meta?

2025-05-21T14:41:02-04:00

In its antitrust case against Meta, the US Federal Trade Commission is asking a judge to consider an alternate reality. In that world, the company never bought Instagram and WhatsApp. The two apps remained competitive with Facebook, developing features that competed for users' attention. And that competition created a thriving ecosystem of social media apps where people can connect with their friends and family.

Meta has spent the past several days - during which it's begun lodging its case-in-chief in a Washington, DC, courthouse - building a counternarrative. In its telling of this alternate present, Instagram and WhatsApp are shadows of …

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Meta asks judge to throw out antitrust case mid-trial

2025-05-15T19:50:26-04:00

Meta has filed a motion for judgment on the antitrust case it's currently fighting in court. The motion argues that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has failed to produce any evidence that Meta unlawfully monopolized part of the social networking market, something the government argues it did through its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp.

The filing was submitted this evening, shortly after the FTC rested its case in a protracted trial before DC District Court Judge James Boasberg. "After five weeks of trial, it is clear that the FTC has failed to meet the legal standard required under antitrust law," said Meta spokesperson Christoph …

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Meta’s beef with the press flares at its antitrust trial

2025-05-13T20:35:17-04:00

Long-simmering tension between Silicon Valley and the press that covers it is surfacing during the Federal Trade Commission's antitrust trial against Meta.

During a heated cross-examination of the FTC's key economic expert, Scott Hemphill, Meta's lead attorney, Mark Hansen, noted that Hemphill joined Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes and former Biden official Tim Wu in pitching regulators on an antitrust probe of the company back in 2019. The pitch deck for the probe that was shown in court included "public recognition" of the company's aggressive acquisition strategy from two reporters: Kara Swisher, who currently hosts two podcasts for Th …

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Why one obscure app could help crumble Meta’s empire

2025-05-13T09:45:07-04:00

If the question, "Who is Meta's biggest rival?" were on a Family Feud survey, TikTok would likely be the winning answer. In the Federal Trade Commission's antitrust case against the Facebook and Instagram owner, the government's response probably wouldn't even make the top 10: a small blockchain-based platform called MeWe.

MeWe looks a fair amount like Facebook at first glance, except that you make an account using the Frequency blockchain - which the company explains is a decentralized protocol that lets you move your social connections to other (mostly hypothetical at this point) apps that support Frequency. The company says 20 million u …

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Instagram CEO testifies about competing with TikTok: ‘You’re either growing, or you’re slowly dying’

2025-05-09T08:11:55-04:00

When Adam Mosseri took over Meta-owned Instagram as CEO in 2018, the app was experiencing what he'd later call "concerning" drops and plateaus in user engagement, thanks partly to fierce competition from a new app: TikTok. Instagram estimated in 2019 that 23 percent of the decline in time spent on Instagram in the US was due to TikTok. ByteDance's video app kept expanding through the onset of the covid-19 pandemic. "We can't explain it all, but what's clear at this point is that we need to adapt, and do so quickly," Mosseri wrote to his team in March 2020. Instagram needed to recover, he testified Thursday in a DC courtroom, because "you're …

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