On Monday, A landmark antitrust trial against social media giant Meta began in Washington. This case is important because it might force Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to sell Instagram.
The US Competition and Consumer watchdog filed the case. It claims Meta, which already owned Facebook, bought Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014 to kill competition. This, the watchdog says, gave Meta a monopoly. Both deals were approved earlier by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC). But the FTC was also supposed to watch the impact of these deals.
According to media reports, if the FTC wins, Meta could be forced to sell Instagram and WhatsApp. Meta, however, says it is confident of winning. Experts told media that Meta would likely argue that Instagram got better after the takeover.
Vanderbilt Law School professor Rebecca Haw Allensworth said the FTC believes Facebook bought Instagram to remove a rising rival. She added that Zuckerberg’s old emails could be strong evidence. “He said it’s better to buy than to compete. It’s hard to find anything clearer than that,” she noted.
“They’re going to say the real question is: are consumers better off as a result of this merger?,” she said. “They’ll put on a lot of evidence that Instagram became what it is today because it benefited from being owned by Facebook.”
Politics behind the case
Zuckerberg and Meta’s ex-COO Sheryl Sandberg are expected to testify. The trial may last for weeks. The case was filed when Donald Trump was president for the first time. Now, in Trump’s second term, the case could become political.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Zuckerberg met Trump and asked him to push the FTC to drop the case. When BBC asked Meta about it, the company avoided answering. Instead, Meta said the FTC’s lawsuit “defies reality.”
A Meta spokesperson told the BBC, “More than 10 years after the FTC approved our deals, this lawsuit shows no deal is ever truly final.” During Trump’s first term, his relationship with Zuckerberg was cold, especially after Meta banned him from its platforms following the US Capitol riot in January 2021.
Trump vs Zuckerberg
During Trump’s first term, the relationship between Zuckerberg and Trump was cold, especially after Trump was banned from Meta’s platforms following the US Capitol riot in January 2021. But in time, the relationship has improved. Meta gave $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund. In January, Meta also announced that Dana White, a close Trump friend and UFC boss, was joining its board. Around the same time, Meta said it would remove independent fact-checkers.
Trump’s recent decision to fire two Democrat FTC commissioners, Rebecca Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya, has also created controversy. Both claim the move was meant to scare them and other FTC members. Slaughter told the BBC the message was clear: follow orders or risk losing your job.
The FTC’s chair, Ferguson, a Trump appointee, said he would obey legal orders but would be surprised if the president asked him to drop the Meta case. He has also said he believes independent regulators may not be “good for democracy.”
The FTC has long worked to fight fraud and protect consumers. But now, the Meta trial shows it may be under political pressure like never before.
