Associated Press Technology Writer Barbara Ortutay
Meta Platforms Inc. faces a historic anti-trust trial since Monday, when the Tech giants can force them to destroy Instagram and WhatsApp. It was a startup I bought over a decade ago and has since grown into a social media powerhouse.
The looming antitrust trial will be the first major test of President Donald Trump’s ability to challenge the big-name federal trade commission technology. The lawsuit was filed against Meta (then called Facebook) during Trump’s first term in 2020. It claims that the company has squashed the competition by buying Instagram and WhatsApp and establishing an illegal monopoly in the social media market.
According to the FTC, Meta maintains its monopoly by pursuing CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s strategy expressed in 2008. True to that adage, Facebook systematically tracked its potential rivals and acquired companies that it deemed a threat to serious competition. ”
Facebook has also enacted a policy designed to make it difficult for small rivals to enter the market and “neutralize the threat of perceived competition,” the FTC says in its complaint, as the world has shifted attention from desktop computers to mobile devices.
“Because we were unable to maintain our monopoly by competing quite a bit, company executives tackled the existential threat by acquiring new innovators who have succeeded where Facebook failed,” says the FTC.
Facebook bought Instagram. In 2012, $1 billion in cash and stock purchase prices were eye-opening in 2012, but in 2012 Facebook’s stock price fell to $750 million after Facebook’s stock price fell in May 2012.
Instagram was the first company Facebook bought and continued to run as a separate app. Until then, Facebook was known for its small “Ackii-Hire.” This is a popular Silicon Valley deal where companies buy startups as a way to hire talented workers, shutting down the acquired companies. Two years later, I did it again on the messaging app WhatsApp and bought it for $22 billion.
WhatsApp and Instagram helped Facebook move their business from desktop computers to mobile devices, and continued to remain popular among the younger generations as rivals like Snapchat (which I also tried but bought but failed) and Tiktok. However, FTC has a narrow definition of Meta’s competitive market, except that companies such as Tiktok, YouTube and Apple’s messaging services are considered rivals.
“The FTC already has a tough task, whether it’s 10 or 5 years ago or today, whether it’s trying to define a market that’s talking in a narrow way that can show that Meta has a lot of electricity in its market.” “And that challenge has become more and more difficult as the years go by, and I think we’re seeing more and more potential competitors in the social media space.”
Meanwhile, Meta says the FTC lawsuit “ignoring reality.”
“The evidence at trial shows you know every 17 years of age around the world. Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp competes with China-owned Tiktok, YouTube, X, Imessage and more. More than a decade after FTC reviewed and cleared the acquisition, the committee’s lawsuit in this case is to support great innovation, to help American innovation, to promote it being a great final issue, and to help contractor litigation is truly final. Issues like AI,” the company said in a statement.
In an application last week, Meta also emphasized that the FTC “mus has to prove that Meta has exclusive rights in the current relevant market, not at some point in the past.” This tells experts that it’s challenging as more competitors have emerged in the social media space for years since the company bought WhatsApp and Instagram.
Meta’s fate will be decided by US district judge James Boasberg, who denied Meta’s summary judgment late last year and found the case must go to trial.
Boasberg appears to be “skeptical” of FTC’s narrow market definition in previous rulings, Swanson said. He added that the judge also said it was a “factual question.” This means he is open to hearing what the FTC and its experts have to say to define its narrow market.
The FTC can face a difficult battle in proofing the case, but Meta’s interests are high.
“Instagram is currently the largest money maker in Meta, the most lucrative market with apps making up 50.5% of the company’s ad revenue in 2025. Instagram has picked up Facebook’s Slack, especially among young people. “The trial is also because Meta is trying to revive OG Facebook to appeal to Gen Z and younger users when it comes to social media. The use of social media is much more fragmented than in 2012, when Facebook acquired Instagram.
But it’s not just technology companies in the sight of federal antitrust regulators. Google and Amazon face their own cases. The Google case relief phase is scheduled to begin on April 21st. A federal judge declared an illegal monopoly by the search giant in August last year.
“The big theme here is applying 19th century law to the 21st century market. And I think it’s obvious whether we can keep up with the market as antitrust development changes. “And this will be a case of talking directly to it.”
Original issue: April 14, 2025 8:39am EDT
