The Zuck Plays Defense: The Opposing Line Is Huge, Dude
May 15, 2025
The BBC reports that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has been in the news lately for his company being on trial: “Mark Zuckerberg Defends Meta In Social Media Monopoly Trial.” Meta and Zuckerberg are on trail for antitrust allegations that the company has a monopoly on social media. Zuckerberg testified in 2020 when the FTC brought the case to court.
The allegations are that Zuckerberg dominated the social media market when it acquired Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014. The FTC wants Meta to split apart by forcing Instagram and WhatsApp into separate entities. Meta argues there’s plenty of competition with X, YouTube, and TikTok. Zuckerberg was the first to testify in the trial expected to last until July 2025.
The FTC says that Meta bought rivals because it was easier to acquire them than compete with them:
“They decided that competition was too hard and it would be easier to buy out their rivals than to compete with them,” said FTC lawyer Daniel Matheson in his opening statement at Monday’s trial. Meta countered that the lawsuit from the FTC, which originally reviewed and approved both those acquisitions, was “misguided”.
Meta ‘acquired Instagram and WhatsApp to improve and grow them alongside Facebook’, the company’s attorney Mark Hansen argued.
The FTC lawyer cited a 2012 memo from Mr Zuckerberg in which he discusses the importance of “neutralising” Instagram.
Mr Matheson called that message “a smoking gun”.”
Meta argues that when they acquired the competing platforms that it made them better for users. Instagram accounts for over half of Meta’s advertising revenue. Meta also donated to Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. Zuckerberg repeatedly petitions Trump to have the FTC charges dropped. The FTC has a harder case to prove than when Google was sued for monopolizing search. I wonder if the prosecution’s attorneys have read Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism.
Whitney Grace, May 15, 2025
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