Meta is not a monopolist, judge rules

Meta won a landmark antitrust conflict with the Federal Trade Commission connected Tuesday aft a national justice ruled it has not monopolized the societal media marketplace astatine the halfway of the case.

US District Court Judge James Boasberg wrote that Meta had not unfairly cornered a marketplace connected “personal societal networking,” a class that includes a constrictive subset of societal media apps including Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. The decision, which tin beryllium appealed by the FTC, means Meta volition not instantly look demands to undo acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp.

Boasberg noted that he’d warned the FTC that it faced an “uphill battle” successful defining the marketplace astatine contented and proving Meta held an amerciable monopoly successful it. Ultimately, helium ruled, it failed to beryllium that Meta didn’t look important contention from different kinds of societal media platforms, peculiarly aft the accelerated emergence of TikTok — which Meta cited arsenic a large origin successful its defense. “The scenery that existed lone 5 years agone erstwhile the Federal Trade Commission brought this antitrust suit has changed markedly,” Boasberg wrote. “While it erstwhile mightiness person made consciousness to partition apps into abstracted markets of societal networking and societal media, that partition has since breached down.”

The FTC argued that Meta had maintained amerciable monopoly powerfulness successful the constrictive assemblage of the societal media marketplace by gobbling up nascent competitors Instagram and WhatsApp it feared could endanger its dominance. But passim the trial, the FTC was dogged by questions astir whether it could assertion Meta inactive had that amerciable monopoly successful the look of a greatly-changed societal media landscape. Boasberg said the authorities had to beryllium existent oregon imminent amerciable monopolization, not conscionable past dominance.

“With apps surging and receding, chasing 1 craze and moving connected from others, and adding caller features with each passing year, the FTC has understandably struggled to hole the boundaries of Meta’s merchandise market,” Boasberg wrote. “Even so, it continues to importune that Meta competes with the aforesaid aged rivals it has for the past decade, that the institution holds a monopoly among that tiny set, and that it maintained that monopoly done anticompetitive acquisitions. Whether oregon not Meta enjoyed monopoly powerfulness successful the past, though, the bureau indispensable amusement that it continues to clasp specified powerfulness now. The Court’s verdict contiguous determines that the FTC has not done so.”

This communicative is developing.