Did WhatsApp really need Meta?

In its antitrust lawsuit against Meta, the US Federal Trade Commission is asking a justice to see an alternate reality. In that world, the institution ne'er bought Instagram and WhatsApp. The 2 apps remained competitory with Facebook, processing features that competed for users' attention. And that contention created a thriving ecosystem of societal media apps wherever radical tin link with their friends and family.

Meta has spent the past respective days - during which it's begun lodging its case-in-chief successful a Washington, DC, courthouse - gathering a counternarrative. In its telling of this alternate present, Instagram and WhatsApp are shadows of what they are successful our world. They lacked the resources, expertise, and imaginativeness to go robust and invaluable online platforms, fto unsocial formidable competitors. And consumers are the ones who yet suffered.

One of Meta's cardinal witnesses for this defence is WhatsApp cofounder Brian Acton, who was called connected Tuesday to assistance marque its lawsuit that WhatsApp users, conscionable similar Instagram ones, benefited from Meta's acquisition. Acton was the 2nd app laminitis to attest successful the case, aft Instagram cofounder Kevin Systrom delivered mostly blistering te …

Read the afloat communicative astatine The Verge.