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Meta wins monopoly trial, convinces judge that social networking is dead (arstechnica.com)

submitted 2 hours ago by resipsaloquitur@lemmy.world to c/nottheonion@lemmy.world

7 comments fedilink hide all child comments

cross-posted from: https://toast.ooo/post/10656689

After years of pushback from the Federal Trade Commission over Meta’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp, Meta has defeated the FTC’s monopoly claims.

In a Tuesday ruling, US District Judge James Boasberg said the FTC failed to show that Meta has a monopoly in a market dubbed “personal social networking.” In that narrowly defined market, the FTC unsuccessfully argued, Meta supposedly faces only two rivals, Snapchat and MeWe, which struggle to compete due to its alleged monopoly.

But the days of grouping apps into “separate markets of social networking and social media” are over, Boasberg wrote. He cited the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, who “posited that no man can ever step into the same river twice,” while telling the FTC they missed their chance to block Meta’s purchase.

Essentially, Boasberg agreed with Meta that social media—as it was known in Facebook’s early days—is dead. And that means that Meta now competes with a broader set of rival apps, which includes two hugely popular platforms: TikTok and YouTube.

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[–] FUCKING_CUNO@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Fair enough, seems I may have been quick to judge, but i still have a hard time understanding why they'd take the position they have in this case.

[–] resipsaloquitur@lemmy.world 13 points 1 hour ago

The TLDR I heard is that the government failed to argue that Meta had a monopoly for the government’s definition of a social network, implying their definition wasn’t very good.

The real crime was the FTC allowing Facebook to buy Instagram and WhatsApp in the first place. Their own emails have shown they bought both of them to prevent competition.