In a DC courtroom this week, Mark Zuckerberg defended Meta against accusations of antitrust practices from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which is seeking to unwind his acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp.
The FTC has defined “personal social networking services” as social media apps that primarily facilitate sharing between friends and family as Meta’s competitors, giving it a US legal monopoly with 80% market share, but excluding private messaging apps from the definition.
However, if all competitors that Meta considers relevant were included, such as TikTok, YouTube, iMessage, X, Telegram, etc., Meta’s monopoly would be hard to argue, with internal data from Meta showing that Facebook and Instagram traffic increased when TikTok was briefly offline.
The FTC is largely ignoring network effects, which sees the more people that use a social media platform, the more difficult it becomes to unseat, which Meta has used to leverage the growth of its apps.
The case is currently receiving a lot of media attention, with judges ruling twice in favour of the government in big tech antitrust lawsuits, potentially giving the FTC a political edge beyond the courtroom.