Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson previews the launch of an agency antitrust case against Meta and details the Trump administration’s deregulation agenda.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared in federal court on Monday to testify on the first day of a groundbreaking antitrust case against his company. This denounces Zuckerberg and other senior leaders for purchasing small apps like Zuckerberg and Instagram and WhatsApp to create social media monopolies.
A Federal Trade Commission lawyer said in a statement Monday that over the course of the weekly hearing, Meta will try to prove that he has purchased Instagram and WhatsApp as part of a so-called “purchase or buried” strategy, particularly as part of competition and alternatives from apps that are considered threats to the platform.
“They decide that competition is too difficult, and it’s easier to buy a rival than to compete with them,” FTC lawyer Daniel Matheson said Monday.
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E. Barrett Prettyman US Court is considered the US Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
For over a decade, the strategy claimed that Meta was able to buy competition far more than market value. They have established so-called “entry barriers” to protect social media control.
Matheson and the FTC have accused Meta of adopting strategies to gain monopoly in the so-called “personal social networking” market.
If successful, the FTC will likely rebuild the company, asking the court to order a meta, or sell it from an acquisition company such as Instagram or WhatsApp.
The victory is a notable victory for the federal government when it struggled to beat court agendas, including Silicon Valley and its complex network of start-ups.
Meta is currently worth $1.4 trillion. If FTC lawyers prioritize antitrust lawsuits against META, that would be the biggest dissolution of US companies as the government ordered the dissolution of AT&T in the early 1980s.
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Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of the Center’s Meta Platforms Inc., arrives at the 60th Presidential inauguration at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC, and Washington, DC on Monday, January 20, 2025. (Getty Images/Getty Images via Shawn Thew/EPA/Bloomberg)
Despite the long tail of the lawsuit, FTC’s lawyers wereted a bit of a hit when calling first witness, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, to the stands on Monday.
So Zuckerberg was burned in emails sent in 2012 and 2014 regarding Instagram and WhatsApp purchases, respectively.
In an email in 2012, Zuckerberg said in a story by Matheson that he saw his own company grow so quickly that he “buy” it.
“It’s an email written by someone who perceives Instagram as a threat and is forced to sacrifice $1 billion because Meta couldn’t deal with that threat through competition,” Matheson said.
He was also faced with questions about Facebook’s transformation, which the FTC noted. It said that the FTC was sent as a site designed to facilitate connections with peers that showcase more third-party content, such as News and Group Activities.
“As time passed, that ‘interest’ part became more than the ‘friend’ part,” Zuckerberg responded.
Zuckerberg said users are now “connected to more groups and other types of things” compared to previous eras.
“The ‘friends’ part is pretty down, but that’s still something we care about,” he said.
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Jason Citron, CEO of Discord, CEO of Evan Spiegel, CEO of SNAP, CEO of Shou Zi Chew, CEO of Tiktok, CEO of Linda Yaccarino, CEO of X, and CEO of Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta Look, who testifies before the 2024 Senate Judiciary Committee (Alex Wong / Getty Images / Getty Images)
Meanwhile, Meta’s lawyer, Mark Hansen, in his opening remarks, attempted to dismiss the “glove bag” of FTC theory “in the war with law.”
“The facts would prove that all the FTC theories are wrong,” Hansen told Judge James Boasberg, the judge of the trial.
Meta’s lawyers were trying to challenge the FTC’s explanation of what is called “personal social networking” apps, claiming that the pool of competitors is actually much larger.
During the hearing, Boasberg listened carefully, took notes, asked questions from time to time and asked for details.
The bench trial is expected to be decided by a single judge (in this case, Judge Boasberg) and last about eight weeks.
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Later this week, the court is expected to hear from other former senior officials in Meta, with witnesses including former chief operations officer Cheryl Sandberg and former chief technology officer Andrew Bosworth.
