The Federal Trade Commission lost its antitrust case against Meta last year, but the regulator hasn’t given up on its attempts 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 hadn’t proven that Meta is currently operating as a monopoly.
“Meta has maintained its dominant position and record profits for well over a decade not through legitimate competition, but by buying its most significant competitive threats,” the FTC’s Bureau of Competition Director Daniel Guarnera said in a statement. “The Trump-Vance FTC will continue fighting its historic case against Meta to ensure that competition can thrive across the country to the benefit of all Americans and U.S. 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 it once competed with, Instagram and WhatsApp, the company had depressed competition in the space and ultimately hurt 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.
US District Judge James Boasberg was ultimately persuaded by Meta’s arguments, writing that the success of YouTube and TikTok prevented Meta from currently “holding a monopoly” even if the company had acted monopolistically in the past. If the FTC had won, it could have tried to force Meta to undo its acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram. Should it be successful in its appeal, that remedy could once again be on the table.
News of the FTC’s plan to appeal is also a blow to Zuckerberg, who has spent the last year courting Trump and hyping Meta’s plans to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on AI infrastructure in the United States. In a statement, Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said that the original ruling was “correct,” and that “Meta will remain focused on innovating and investing in America.”
