Meta Platforms, the owner of Facebook, will stand trial in a U.S. Federal Trade Commission lawsuit seeking to break up the company over allegations it acquired Instagram and WhatsApp to stifle emerging social media competition.
A Washington judge ruled Wednesday that Meta must face the legal challenge.
Judge James Boasberg largely rejected Meta’s motion to dismiss the case, which was filed in 2020 under the Trump administration. The FTC argues that Meta, formerly Facebook, overpaid for Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014 to eliminate potential competitors, rather than competing fairly in the mobile ecosystem.
Boasberg allowed that claim to stand but dismissed the FTC’s allegation that Facebook bolstered its dominance by restricting third-party app developers’ access to the platform unless they agreed not to compete with its core services.
“We are confident that the evidence at trial will show that the acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp have been good for competition and consumers,” a Meta spokesperson said Wednesday.
FTC spokesperson Douglas Farrar said the case, filed during the Trump administration and refined under Biden, “represents a bipartisan effort to curtail Meta’s monopoly power and restore competition to ensure freedom and innovation in the social media ecosystem.”
At trial, Meta will not be allowed to argue the WhatsApp acquisition boosted competition by strengthening its position against Apple and Google, Boasberg ruled.
The judge said he would release a detailed order later Wednesday after the FTC and Meta have had a chance to redact any sensitive commercial information.
A trial date in the case has not been set.
Meta had urged the judge to dismiss the entire case, saying it depended on an overly narrow view of social media markets and did not account for competition from ByteDance’s TikTok, Google’s YouTube, X, and Microsoft’s LinkedIn.
The case is one of five blockbuster lawsuits where antitrust regulators at the FTC and U.S. Department of Justice are going after Big Tech.
Amazon.com Inc. and Apple are both being sued, and Alphabet’s Google is facing two lawsuits, including one where a judge recently found it unlawfully thwarted competition among online search engines.
