The Federal Trade Commission lost its antitrust case against Meta last year, but the regulator has not given up its efforts to punish the social media company for its acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram. The FTC is appealing a ruling last year in which a federal judge found that the government had not proven that Meta was currently operating as a monopoly.
“Meta has maintained its dominant position and record profits for more than a decade, not through legitimate competition, but by buying out its most significant competitive threats,” Daniel Guarnera, director of the FTC’s Competition Bureau, said in a statement. “The Trump-Vance FTC will continue to fight its landmark case against Meta to ensure that competition is increased across the country for the benefit of all Americans and American businesses.”
The FTC originally filed antitrust charges against Facebook in 2020, during President Donald Trump’s first term in office. The government argued that by acquiring apps like Instagram and WhatsApp, the company had reduced competition in the sector and ultimately harmed consumers. A trial last year saw testimony from several current and former executives, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg and former COO Sheryl Sandberg, who spoke at length about the pressure to compete with TikTok.
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ultimately agreed with Meta’s arguments, writing that the success of YouTube and TikTok prevented Meta from “holding a monopoly” in the present, even though the company may have acted as a monopoly in the past. If the FTC had won, it could have tried to force Meta to cancel its acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram. Should it succeed in its appeal, the measure could once again come under discussion.
News of the FTC’s plan to appeal is also a blow to Zuckerberg, who spent last year dating Trump and promoting Meta’s plan to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on AI infrastructure in the United States. In a statement, Meta spokesman Andy Stone said the original decision was “the right one” and that “Meta will remain focused on innovation and investment in the US.”
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