Meta antitrust trial kicks off in federal court

https://www.axios.com/pro/tech-policy/2025/04/14/ftc-meta-antitrust-trial-kicks-off-in-federal-court

by c420 • 1 year ago

431 318 1 year ago

axios.com

dang• 1 year ago

Other articles posted about this:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/14/technology/meta-antitrust... (https://archive.ph/8wOPP)

https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/14/media/meta-ftc-trial/index.ht...

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/13/meta-zuckerberg-ftc...

(I've omitted the HN links this time because there weren't any comments yet. Someday we're going to do proper URL bundling and karma sharing for cases like this, where multiple submitters post good articles on the same underlying story.)

iambateman2• 1 year ago

Karma sharing would be huge. That's a great idea and I think would increase the overall quality of links a lot. At least worth a shot.

thierrydamiba• 1 year ago

This is a pretty fun link:

https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders

The leaderboard system is interesting because they don’t actually show numbers for the top 10(to de-incentivize farming battles I assume).

If you look at the top profile, tptacek, you can see they have a little over 400k karma and they are active(posted two days ago).

Thanks to Thomas people like him who make this site fun!

luminadiffusion• 1 year ago

Zuck waved the white flag, settled the frivolous Trump libel lawsuit, and made several trips to kiss Trump's ring - now he is getting skewered anyhow. Deliciously ironic.

“Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing.”

― Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment.

hnlmorg• 1 year ago

I wouldn’t write off a leniency due to their aforementioned arse kissing. A trial doesn’t mean a they’ll be found guilty, let alone given any tangible consequences.

ocdtrekkie2• 1 year ago

The DOJ has continued to indicate it intends to require Google spin off Chrome and obviously the tariff game has done no favors to Apple.

Giving Trump money appears to be a game for suckers.

aylmao• 1 year ago

In fact, wouldn't a trial where they aren't found guilty would probably be better a better outcome for Zuckerberg than no trial at all?

paxys5• 1 year ago

The judge is an Obama appointee and is the same one who ordered Trump to halt illegal deportations to El Salvador. Trump has publicly called for him to be removed. If the administration wanted a lenient ruling, he is the last judge they would rely on.

2OEH8eoCRo0• 1 year ago

If Meta loses then Trump will use selective enforcement for leverage.

nradov• 1 year ago

This is a civil trial, not criminal. There is no way to find a defendant "guilty".

input_sh2• 1 year ago

This has been brewing since 2020, trials of this scale take time to build: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Trade_Commission_v._Me....

If anything, he was kissing Trump's ass because he knew it was about to reach trial. The date was known since November.

paxys5• 1 year ago

That's the point. Big tech kissed Trump's arse in the hopes that he would end the antitrust investigations. Meta literally bribed him to do so. Now Trump is just doubling down on them.

bamboozled• 1 year ago

He can just pay his way out of this now, you know that.

goatsi• 1 year ago

He's being blamed for stealing the 2020 election from Trump, so no donations or ring kissing seem to be enough.

https://www.semafor.com/article/04/14/2025/trump-officials-s...

forgotoldacc• 1 year ago

Kind of ironic that Facebook+Cambridge Analytica seem completely forgotten despite being a coordinated, successful effort to push for swings towards Trump.

Roko's Basilisk might be hitting us faster than we thought.

alex11384• 1 year ago

I think Whatsapp is the clearest possible case that can be made of any company? They violated the condition of not sharing user data with Facebook

Willing to listen to other opinions on other companies, but surely Whatsapp

changoplatanero• 1 year ago

That was a voluntary pledge the company made to the users, right? It wasn't a legally binding commitment that there would never ever be any data sharing.

onlyrealcuzzo• 1 year ago

Dear Users, in our Terms of Service, we tell you that we won't share your data.

Psych, it wasn't legally binding.

devrandoom2• 1 year ago

It came with a threat that you'd lose your account of you didn't approve. That's hardly voluntary.

loeg2• 1 year ago

Is this relevant to the antitrust case?

henryfjordan6• 1 year ago

"The FTC's lawsuit against Meta defies reality. The evidence at trial will show what every 17-year-old in the world knows: Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp compete with Chinese-owned TikTok, YouTube, X, iMessage and many others," Meta spokesperson Chris Sgro said in a statement.

Everyone knew at the time that Facebook bought Instagram because it threatened Facebook's dominance, and hindsight shows that exactly that happened. There's a huge swath of people that dropped off FB and now use Insta, but Meta owns both. It was a great move but it was absolutely anti-competitive at the time.

ilrwbwrkhv• 1 year ago

Now the real thing that has to be seen is whether Mark Zuckerberg is "masculine" enough to escape from "the matrix".

ceejayoz• 1 year ago

They're also directly behind some of the anti-TikTok push; again, trying to kneecap their competition.

https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/report-facebook-hi...

wikipedia• 1 year ago

Over the last ~3 years I've been passively following the negative PR campaign against TT by Meta; a lot of the outrage felt a bit manufactured, specifically the outlandish claims like the 'slap a teacher challenge' which, upon investigation, didn't actually exist [0]

[0] https://www.vice.com/en/article/slap-a-teacher-tiktok-challe...

https://archive.ph/ERLFo - Facebook paid Targeted Victory, a PR firm, to malign TikTok

https://archive.ph/wYuvL - A whistleblower’s power: Key takeaways from the Facebook Papers

https://archive.ph/rWDA4 - Mark Zuckerberg says TikTok is a threat to democracy, but didn't say he spent 6 months trying to buy its predecessor

https://archive.ph/H8SIk - Before Mark Zuckerberg Tried To Kill TikTok, He Wanted To Own It

https://archive.ph/liFKi - FACEBOOK’S PLAYBOOK TO BEAT COMPETITORS HAS HAD TO CHANGE WITH TIKTOK

https://archive.ph/9XSqi - Facebook Tries to Take Down TikTok

https://archive.ph/LWTHf - Reuters: Factbox: Facebook and TikTok's fraught history - quick look

https://archive.ph/H3dfJ - Facebook Parent Company Defends Its PR Campaign to Portray TikTok as Threat to American Children

mupuff1234• 1 year ago

Plus they tried to buy other companies that they thought posed a threat (snap, etc?)

unreal37• 1 year ago

The government is claiming that Facebook bought Meta and Whatsapp because it couldn't compete with them.

Is that illegal? I don't understand! Every company that buys another company buys it because it adds something to their business. It's a ridiculous claim.

Retric• 1 year ago

It’s an argument for how to break up the company not just a complaint about what happened. Companies that buy a supplier or customer frequently didn’t compete with that supplier so breaking them off wouldn’t break up the monopoly.

Whatsapp was purchased as a competition and therefore there’s a solid case for spitting the company along that line. Split off Instagram and things look even more competitive.

pengaru• 1 year ago

The government is claiming that Facebook bought Meta and Whatsapp because it couldn't compete with them.

s/Meta/Instagram/

miltonlost2• 1 year ago

Yes, trying to beat your competition by buying them is incredibly illegal and should be illegal. If you have 70% of a market and an up-and-comer is now at 25% but growing, a market leader purchasing their competitor to maintain their market position is an anti-competitive move and why we don't and shouldn't allow every single horizontal or vertical or conglomerate merger.

it because it adds something to their business. It's a ridiculous claim.

"It" and "Something" are incredibly vague and meaningless. Their vacuousness is what allows you to not understand the illegal behavior.

bakugo• 1 year ago

Every company that buys another company buys it because it adds something to their business.

The point is that they didn't acquire those companies to add to their business, they acquired them because their continued independent existence detracted from their business. Also known as competition.

paxys5• 1 year ago

If everyone indeed "knew at the time" then why did the FTC allow the acquisition to go through in a 5-0 vote?

surge3• 1 year ago

This is what I don't get, the FTC is suing because the FTC allowed something to happen, when the platforms had even more dominance than they do now?

Kind of stinks of less than valid motivations based on the timing of bringing this up over a decade after the fact.

miltonlost2• 1 year ago

Partly our regulatory system unfortunately was timid and defanged and philosophically approving of a lot of mergers in general (neoliberalism + Laissez Fair Conservatives). The FTC didn't do the discovery to get the smoking gun email of Zuckerburg saying how he was doing the buyout specifically to "neutralize a potential competitor," (as The New York Times reported).

To anyone on the side of anti-trust, it was clear even without that email as to how much Instagram and WhatsApp were growing, and thus Facebook was Standard Oiling.

henryfjordan6• 1 year ago

A move being anti-competitive and it being against anti-trust law are not the same thing. You also need to establish that the defendant is improperly exercising their own size/market-power to force the deal through which is a much higher bar.

Also the FTC is not exactly known for enforcing antitrust law very strictly.

matthewdgreen2• 1 year ago

I think "everyone" in this case means: people who knew the business and had an adversarial perception of Facebook's intentions. This was apparently not how the FTC thought at the time.

Hell, even I wasn't this cynical back in those days. I was shocked as late as 2018 when Facebook began using SMS phone numbers for advertising, something they'd promised not to do (for obvious reasons.) https://www.cbsnews.com/news/facebook-said-to-use-peoples-ph...

arrosenberg4• 1 year ago

The combination of neoliberal laissez-faire economics along with how strongly tech supported President Obama's campaigns meant that the industry got to run amok for a decade. It's easily one of the biggest stains on his presidency in hindsight.

michaelt2• 1 year ago

The government just kinda forgot that competition law existed for a few decades.

They were busy doing things like bringing freedom and democracy to Afghanistan, having a financial crisis, stuff like that. Very important stuff. Social media? Oh yes I think my grandson told me about that.

ideashower2• 1 year ago

I tried to answer that here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43686919

fallingknife4• 1 year ago

It was a tiny 1 billion dollar acquisition of a company with less than 50 employees. If everyone knew at the time how dominant Instagram would become, that "everyone" sure didn't include the founders and investors in Instagram.

henryfjordan6• 1 year ago

Facebook, wary of someone doing to them what they did to MySpace, was going around buying anyone who might be the next thing. It wasn't necessarily clear that Insta would blow up in the way it did but it was clear that was Facebook's motivation for buying.

Also "tiny 1 billion dollar acquisition" is not how I'd characterize what was the largest acquisition FB had made up to that point: https://archive.nytimes.com/dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/04/09/...

Though Facebook is known for smaller acquisitions, Instagram’s surging momentum likely compelled the social network to swiftly put together a billion-dollar offer.

jupp0r• 1 year ago

There is also the question of cause and effect. Did Instagram grow to what it is today because of a decade of investments from Meta?

devrandoom2• 1 year ago

Back in the day, Android allowed any app to see what other apps were installed. That's how Facebook saw the threat from Instagram so early.

zombiwoof5• 1 year ago

Facebook knew. They have the data by spying on everything

They knew photos tracked better in news feeds

Also they new users don’t like to switch and get new followers

See Bluesky now. Hard to move even 1000 followers

jjallen2• 1 year ago

This implies that every horizontal acquisition is anti-competitive, does it not? If not I would love to read why not.

michaelt2• 1 year ago

If there are 7 different grocery stores in driving distance of my house and two of them merge, I've still got a choice of 6 stores so there's still reasonable competition.

If there are 3 different grocery stores and two of them merge, though? That's a different matter.

And if 1 of the remaining 2 is the zero-waste organic store that only rich people and hippies use? It might not even be providing all that much competition.

henryfjordan6• 1 year ago

Yes, every horizontal acquisition is anti-competitive.

Antitrust violations are a higher bar, you must improperly flex your dominant market position to violate the law. For that the government would have to show that FB offered an unreasonable price that nobody sane would match or that they threatened to cut off Insta links from FB if they didn't sell, something like that.

_aavaa_• 1 year ago

Not always. Say you have 4 cell phone carriers. 2 clearly on top and 2 far behind. The two weak ones merging would, on paper, take you from 4 companies to 3. In reality you go from 2 options to 3.

megaman821• 1 year ago

Can you show me something from that time that shows this was the dominate sentiment? Because I remember everyone laughing the Facebook would pay so much for such a simple app.

henryfjordan6• 1 year ago

here's a Techcrunch article from the time: https://techcrunch.com/2012/04/09/facebook-to-acquire-instag...

Last year, documents for a standalone Facebook mobile photo sharing app were attained by TechCrunch. Now it seems Facebook would rather buy Instagram which comes with a built-in community of photographers and photo lovers, while simultaneously squashing a threat to its dominance in photo sharing.

doctorpangloss• 1 year ago

Sherman Antitrust Act fits on a single sheet of paper. Does the statute say anything about the sentiments of the blogs you read?

chourobin• 1 year ago

This is a joke, everyone made fun of FB paying 1 BILLION dollars for Instagram, they didn't even have an android app at the time.

Aunche2• 1 year ago

Everyone knew at the time that Facebook bought Instagram because it threatened Facebook's dominance, and hindsight shows that exactly that happened.

This is something that people can claim to know from hindsight. When Facebook acquired it, Instagram was a photo sharing app that had 13 employees.

chasing• 1 year ago

The conversations at that time were definitely about how Instagram had the heat that Facebook was losing. I felt there was no question that they were neutralizing a competitor.

(WhatsApp only had, like, 50 employees when FB bought it for $19B, as a bit of evidence that headcount isn’t necessarily a measure of value.)

echelon• 1 year ago

Meta doesn't bother me too much.

I'm more concerned with YouTube owning all of social video. Movies are on a dozen streamers. Social stuff is on Instagram, TikTok, Reddit, and X. But video essays, independent animation, educational content, cultural critiques, music, video podcasts, trailers, gameplay, research, news - anything long form, serious, interesting - it's all trapped on YouTube as the only distribution platform. And they'll keep getting bigger with no possible alternative due to network effects.

I'm even more concerned with Amazon being a conglomerate [1] that is in online sales, hyperscaler infrastructure, consumer hardware, home automation systems, grocery stores, medicine, primary care, and movie production. And that they can leverage these synergies in grossly unfair ways.

I'm most concerned that the Apple / Google duopoly in mobile, web, and search has entrenched these two players across the vast majority of online transactions, interactions, and computational device usages. They collect margin on everything. They own your devices, they own search, they own the web, they own the apps, they have to be paid off to rank your business, have to be paid off to collect money, they regulate what you can do with your apps and websites, etc. etc. You jump through their hoops. This is their internet.

[1] Especially given the fact that Amazon can subsidize their efforts in these areas from profits in other business units and out-compete viable businesses in those markets. They can offer goods for free with an existing subscription and advertise far and wide across their retail website, plastered on their packaging, and emblazoned on the side of their delivery vehicles. Lord of the Rings got an 80 million dollar advertising package for free, whereas Bong Joon Ho's far more deserving film got next to nothing.

Larrikin4• 1 year ago

If it was some insignificant photo sharing app with 13 employees why did they pay a billion dollars for it? Everyone knew when the sale closed exactly what they were doing.

makeitdouble• 1 year ago

We can't claim that _everyone_ knew. But it was obvious to anyone paying attention, and also to all of us who bailed out of facebook as they became more toxic.

The actual simple photo sharing site was Flickr.

Instagram was seen from the start as a SNS with photo sharing as a pretense. The other SNS were already photo centric either way.

timewizard3• 1 year ago

We have Zuckerberg's emails. No need to claim anything. He said it out loud:

“There are network effects around social products and a finite number of different social mechanics to invent. Once someone wins at a specific mechanic, it’s difficult for others to supplant them without doing something different.”

“One way of looking at this is that what we’re really buying is time. Even if some new competitors springs up, buying Instagram, Path, Foursquare, etc now will give us a year or more to integrate their dynamics before anyone can get close to their scale again. Within that time, if we incorporate the social mechanics they were using, those new products won’t get much traction since we’ll already have their mechanics deployed at scale.”

Forty-five minutes later:

“I didn’t mean to imply that we’d be buying them to prevent them from competing with us in any way,”

Cthulhu_2• 1 year ago

When Facebook acquired it, Instagram was a photo sharing app that had 13 employees.

Sure, but it was a serious threat to Facebook with hordes of especially younger people moving away from FB in favor of more activity on Instagram, which at that time had evolved from "just" a photo making/sharing app to a social network.

blueboo• 1 year ago

But it was at 30m users, post inflection point wrt its hockey stick

Facebook knew what it was doing and the emails plainly reflect that

throw0101b• 1 year ago

When Facebook acquired it, Instagram was a photo sharing app that had 13 employees.

And growing quickly, so:

In his opening remarks, Mr. Matheson mentioned documents, including what he described as a “smoking gun” February 2012 email in which Mr. Zuckerberg discussed the rise of Instagram and the importance of “neutralizing a potential competitor.” In another email, in November 2012 to Ms. Sandberg, the chief operating officer at the time, Mr. Zuckerberg wrote, “Messenger isn’t beating WhatsApp, Instagram was growing so much faster than us that we had to buy them for $1 billion.”
The F.T.C. showed Mr. Zuckerberg a 2011 email in which he wrote, “We really need to get our act together quickly on this since Instagram is growing so fast.”

* https://archive.is/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/14/techno...

It’s a combination of neutralizing a competitor and improving Facebook, Zuckerberg said in a reply. “There are network effects around social products and a finite number of different social mechanics to invent. Once someone wins at a specific mechanic, it’s difficult for others to supplant them without doing something different.”
Zuckerberg continued: “One way of looking at this is that what we’re really buying is time. Even if some new competitors springs up, buying Instagram, Path, Foursquare, etc now will give us a year or more to integrate their dynamics before anyone can get close to their scale again. Within that time, if we incorporate the social mechanics they were using, those new products won’t get much traction since we’ll already have their mechanics deployed at scale.”
Forty-five minutes later, Zuckerberg sent a carefully worded clarification to his earlier, looser remarks.
“I didn’t mean to imply that we’d be buying them to prevent them from competing with us in any way,” he wrote.

* https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/29/21345723/facebook-instagr...

iaw• 1 year ago

Facebook was leveraging Onavo at the time to understand growth trends in competitors. They 100% acquired Instagram and WhatsApp because their growth trends posed threats to the Blue app.

croes• 1 year ago

In the end it doesn’t matter. It matters what Zuckerberg thought.

smashah• 1 year ago

And Whatsapp still has a small team. It has no bearing on the fact that it is more widespread form of communication than text/call/email etc. all over the world under the control of one evil megacorp.

jmyeet2• 1 year ago

So I have an alternative take on this. I don't agree with your basic facts but I have a different conclusion.

If a company, which had 13 employees at the time of acquisition and was ~2 years old, can be a legitimate threat to Facebook (which it was), then how strong is your monopoly, really?

For context, we've seen this play out multiple times in the last decade: with Snapchat to some degree but now, more importantly, with Tiktok.

Many consider Facebook a relic for old people. IG is rapidly meeting the same fate. It seems to be way more popular with millenials than Zoomers (anecdotally).

My point is that when the cost of user switching to a new platform is as simple as downloading a new app and creating a new login, then your "monopoly" lacks the traditional moat or barrier to entry that antitrust is specifically designed to fight.

Put another way: this just isn't as urgent as people are making it out to be and (IMHO) it's merely a shakedown by the current administration to get Meta to fall in line with censoring topics that the administration doesn't like.

zombiwoof5• 1 year ago

Ironic because every 17 year old “at the time” was ditching Facebook and on instagram

nonethewiser• 1 year ago

Anti competitive how though? It helped them, and facebook helped instagram, but where is the monopoly?

eGQjxkKF6fif2• 1 year ago

? Meta owning Instagram and Facebook is the monopoly. Owning things that BILLIONS AND BILLIONS of users use because you want to own them and control them so others don't, that's the monopoly.

Innovation can't happen without Facebook's say-so, that's the monopoly, and over way too many people.

Jensson• 1 year ago

Collusion helps all involved parties but is anti competitive since companies should compete not cooperate.

jdblair• 1 year ago

We're spending a lot of effort discussing what we thought in 2012, when the acquisition on the surface seemed insane ($1B!! For a photo app!)

What is more significant is what Meta did since then.

I do think Meta didn't see simply a photo sharing app, they saw another social graph they could ingest. They did this quite successfully.

BrtByte5• 1 year ago

It always cracks me up when Meta trots out the "but look, there's competition now!" argument like that somehow erases the intent behind those acquisitions

KolenCh• 1 year ago

From an actual email from Mark Zuckerberg on February 28th 2012:

Integrating their products with ours to improve the service is also a factor. But in reality, we already know these companies’ social mechanics, and we will integrate them over the next 12–24 months anyway. The integration plan involves building their mechanics into our products rather than directly integrating their products, if that makes sense, by a combination of these two things: neutralizing a potential competitor, integrating their products with ours to improve the service.
One way of looking at this is that what we’re really buying is time. Even if some new competitor springs up buying Instagram, Path, Foursquare, et cetera, now will give us a year or more to integrate their dynamics before anyone can get close to their scale again. Within that time, if we incorporate the social mechanics they are using, those new products won’t get much traction because we will already have their mechanics deployed at scale.

https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/meta

paxys5• 1 year ago

I don't understand the FTC's strategy here. Their entire case hinges on the fact that the judge will accept that Instagram, WhatsApp, Snapchat and MeWe (?) are direct competitors of Facebook in the "personal social networking" space while TikTok, YouTube, X, iMessage and all the rest aren't. Unsurprisingly that is what Meta's legal team is spending all of its efforts debating. I really can't see the judge allowing such a cherry-picked definition of what Facebook's market is.

scialex• 1 year ago

I mean it's not much more unreasonable then the argument that iphones and android phones don't compete but courts bought that.

granzymes2• 1 year ago

A court didn’t buy that: the district court and 9th Circuit both held that iOS and Android compete in the Epic v. Apple case.

A jury however found that the relevant market in the Epic v. Google case was just Android. Google is understandably appealing that to the 9th Circuit.

whatshisface• 1 year ago

The definition of a trust isn't a business with no competitors. In fact, a business with no competitors is legal. Antitrust law limits "anti-competitive actions," which are possible even for commodity producers in an efficient market.

the_clarence5• 1 year ago

Exactly! So what is anti competitive here?

instagib• 1 year ago

Further advancements in litigation will likely reveal additional information.

gruez• 1 year ago

That's basically every antitrust case. Is Window's market IBM-compatible PCs/laptops, or does it include Macs and chromebooks as well? What about other computing devices like tablets/phones, given that many households (especially in poorer countries) don't even have PCs/laptops?

timewizard3• 1 year ago

Thankfully there are multiple ways to probe this question:

"Did Microsoft sell Windows at a loss?"

Now you don't have to define the market. Microsoft did it for you.

the_clarence5• 1 year ago

Also what if they own multiple apps in the space? I don't get the anti competitiveness here. People can still create new apps and even say no to an acquisition once they become successful.

hooloovoo_zoo2• 1 year ago

It's a good strategy because that's the obvious distinction and there's an easy litmus test (which apps do people use their real names on). Don't be ridiculous with iMessage.

paxys5• 1 year ago

What's the "obvious distinction" and "easy litmus test" that WhatsApp directly competes with Facebook while iMessage is not in the same space? What about Instagram and TikTok?

iambateman2• 1 year ago

Meta could have chosen to compete with then-upstart photo sharing app Instagram in 2012, a senior FTC official said on a call with reporters ahead of the trial, but instead it bought it, and did the same with WhatsApp.

This has a potentially very-chilling effect on acquisitions, which are a major source of liquidity for lots of secondary companies.

zombiwoof5• 1 year ago

Maybe these companies should be built to last not be acquired into monolithic borgs

lenerdenator2• 1 year ago

But then they'd have to compete and not just shovel more money into the pockets of major individual shareholders, along with the retirement and pension funds of a generation that needs to drastically scale back its post-career ambitions.

huitzitziltzin• 1 year ago

The large tech firms get a surprisingly large amount of hate on antitrust issues on this website for startups so I appreciate your point bc I think it’s often missed.

marcosdumay• 1 year ago

It's almost as if people want to create companies that satisfy somebody's need, instead of pretending to be large so it gets brought...

int_19h• 1 year ago

HN might want to be a website for VC startups, but I don't think the community here has been about that for a very long time now.

burkaman• 1 year ago

Creating a chilling effect on acquisitions is the whole point of antitrust law.

jchw7• 1 year ago

I'd kill for a chilling effect on acquisitions. Every single fucking time something I like gets acquired, it takes anywhere between a few months to a couple years before it is completely ruined. Maybe if we're lucky, Microsoft will acquire Discord and run it into the ground the way they did with Skype. (Then, we can all go back to IRC, right? ... Right, guys?)

fallingknife4• 1 year ago

If that were true then acquisitions would be great for competition.

soulofmischief• 1 year ago

When you build a company, if you're looking to cash out and work on something else, it's either going to be by selling shares or getting acquired. Getting acquired can certainly be much less of a headache and risk vs going public or finding private investors to buy out a portion of your shares.

dpoloncsak• 1 year ago

Its more likely we like the things we like because they're still in their "Acquire users" phase, and haven't run out of VC funding yet. Once they they get acquired, they quickly transition to the "squeeze every penny out of those users" phase we all know and love.

surge3• 1 year ago

TBF Skype wasn't profitable when MS bought it, it every much was in the line of make something everyone wants to use and figure out how to make money later. Skype was more or less free to use and it didn't make enough from paid services to cover its operating costs if I remember correctly. So it was always someone buys it or it dies.

The point of many of those companies is to get bought out and then get enshitified or stripped for its IP and integrated into for profit products.

Discord is very much in the same boat of build user base, then either sell or lock people in and charge a lot. It's current model is unsustainable. It will get bought out or enshitify eventually, there's no other sustainable model unless every user starts handing them money every month like its Netflix.

People here used to know this, are we getting an eternal September? Comments are getting more and more "reddit" like.

guestbest2• 1 year ago

I don’t think we can go back to some things like ircd or mud talkers because they are too “chatty” to users. People like simplified centralized services with on screen discovery in the form of popups. The small internet will have to stay small

googlryas2• 1 year ago

What makes you think the products you like will even be launched, if the acquisition pathway to success is not available?

dbg31415• 1 year ago

Discord's recent UI updates (updated skins, or whatever it's called) show they can do a great job of running their own product into the ground just fine.

https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/users-call-for-discord...

JumpCrisscross3• 1 year ago

has a potentially very-chilling effect on acquisitions

I don’t buy it. An independent Instagram would have both been another potential acquirer and a pocketful of cash for investors who might fund another round.

dehrmann• 1 year ago

It's actually worse that that. Making acquisitions hard is one thing; changing the rules post hoc is another.

arrosenberg4• 1 year ago

Antitrust law explicitly allows the government to unwind acquisitions if they are later determined to be anticompetitive. How else would you deal with a company like Meta who has done exactly that?

arrosenberg4• 1 year ago

Good. We need companies that produce economic value, not landlords seeking rent.

skizm2• 1 year ago

What's the point of getting FTC approval of an acquisition in the first place if they can just go back a decade later and undo it?

lenerdenator2• 1 year ago

That's just the concept of judicial review.

colonwqbang• 1 year ago

They can’t just undo it but they can challenge it in court.

But you are right, in a way the FTC is appealing their own decision [1]. US politics can be quite mad at times.

[1] https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2012/08/...

jrapdx3• 1 year ago

"US politics can be quite mad at times."

No question about the truth of that statement.

However, though the FTC approved the acquisition 10 years ago, the current FTC commissioners have evidently concluded that in the interim things have changed. Whether the court agrees with the FTC's logic remains to be seen.

kmeisthax• 1 year ago

Conversely: if Facebook lies their ass off to the FTC to get their mergers approved, why should we accept those lies as immutable truth?

skizm2• 1 year ago

Is that what the FTC is claiming happened?

bogwog2• 1 year ago

What's the point of getting FTC approval

Efficiency? The people at the FTC reviewing mergers can't be experts of every corner of the economy, but if they catch an illegal merger during the approval process it can be blocked early without having to go to court.

An illegal merger is illegal no matter what. It's the corporation's responsibility to not break the law.

googlryas2• 1 year ago

I'm positive that OP understands the reason for an FTC approval. Why did you cut the quote off in the middle of the sentence? The point is about why it's acceptable for the FTC to approve something, and then years later come back and change the decision.

loeg2• 1 year ago

It seems inefficient to retcon mergers as illegal a decade later. A merger is not necessarily black and white illegal or legal; just something vague on a grey spectrum that the FTC happens to be choosing to color an argument for one way or the other depending on current administrative priorities.

vaxman4• 1 year ago

https://youtu.be/cvVBY4QuA5w

I hope Mark issues a public statement that he is dropping his emergency arbitration against her and will allow her book to Publish. I get why he did it, but it didn't work and now it is hurting more than helping. There is no such thing as Bad PR --but an open wound is a different story. (I am on his side in that I don't neurotically hold people accountable for being dbags back in their 20s and early 30s when they aren't that person anymore...google for "brain development at 30" to see why.)

PS: Was at a startup that was wiped out by Instagram 4.3. This was after Mr. SnapEgo reportedly turned down a cool $1B and McAfee's lost son snapped up the technically troubled Vine (that Mr. FootInHisMouth should probably retool and rebrand as "X Prime").

alex11384• 1 year ago

Mr. SnapEgo referring to Zuckerberg?

vaxman4• 1 year ago

matthewdgreen2• 1 year ago

Lots of people behave stupidly in their early 20s, and then grow out of it later in life. But the key is: they have to grow out of it. I'm not convinced this is true of Zuck.

goldchainposse3• 1 year ago

Between his fashion accessories and Joe Rogan appearance, I'm convinced he hasn't. Five years ago, Cheryl Sandberg would call him on it. Today, he's surrounded by yes men.

vaxman4• 1 year ago

It's biological https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-47622059 (mankind didn't know this until the relatively recent advent of "live" brain imaging). Something similar happened with SJobs and today people deify him.

Seriously though, Billy was a FB investor (in addition to apparently being a Sith Lord who may have seen an Anakin-echo in youngling Zuck) and it's assumed he didExert influence during the dark period. It must have been intense for Zuck. Can only hope such influence faded with the Epstein scandal, but it's too late for Mark to stay in control of Meta now anyway, unfortunately you have to take the Bad with the Good. Mark's problem now is he's too young to retire and he really, it's not like he can spin-off with Reality Labs and keep going on the Orion stuff --without leadership, that market isLost to Apple now (though Apple's entire C-suite is aging out and since Elon is not available anymore..heh yeah: Zuck, the next CEO of AAPL --halfway callin' it.)

goldchainposse3• 1 year ago

allow her book to publish

You mean "Careless People?" It looks like it's on Amazon.

vaxman4• 1 year ago

https://www.thebookseller.com/news/meta-wins-bid-to-prevent-...

It's very sad. She reported to Congress that she faces a $50K per disparagement penalty. Let's say there are 25 disparagements in the book and it sells 100K copies into the Billion+ FB user community. As she pointed out to Congress, a disparagement is a truth. $5B for telling truths from seven or eight years ago.

jmyeet2• 1 year ago

So there are two things you should always bear in mind about any action taken by the current administration:

1. Everything is for sale. Any laws, tariffs, regulations, etc that negatively affect your interests can be bought off. Pardons can be sold. Thanks for the Supreme Court, there is absolutely nothing illegal about the President doing this anymore; and

2. The courts are used to bend individuals and companies to the policy and personal interests of the president. Take Eric Adams's corruption case. The DoJ wanted to dismiss the case without prejudice so it could be re-filed. This threat of future prosecution was the point to keep Adams in line. The courts saw through this thinly-veiled influence peddling and dismissed the case with prejudice.

So Meta is being forced to kiss the ring. That means silencing content critical of the administration and allowing right-wing conspiracies and hate speech to spread unfettered.

I expect nothing to come of this because these cases all take a decade or more to filter through various appeals, remands back to the trial court, further appeals and so on. But it will absolutely influence how Meta's recommendation algorithms work.

arrosenberg4• 1 year ago

I don't explicitly disagree with anything you wrote, but this action was brought by the Biden administration (technically they re-filed because the judge had thrown the original case out, which was filed during Trump's lame duck period). Half of Trump's support comes from populists, so the FTC has chosen to continue the prosecution.

droningparrot• 1 year ago

I just want to be able to message people on Instagram without getting sucked into reels

snovymgodym2• 1 year ago

I do not understand what leg the FTC has to stand on in this case at all.

I know the company is quite unpopular, but from an objective legal standpoint I don't see how you can make an antitrust/anticompetitive argument here.

charonn0• 1 year ago

They don't need to be a literal monopoly to be guilty of anti-competitive practices.

granzymes2• 1 year ago

FTC does in fact need to show (directly or through indirect evidence) that Meta has monopoly power in a relevant market and that it abused that power in order to win a Section 2 case.

If the relevant market ends up including TikTok or YouTube, FTC will be unable to make that showing.

busymom0• 1 year ago

Not a fan of Meta and I don't have IG, Facebook, WhatsApp etc.

However, even in 2012 or so when these acquisitions happened, Snapchat was a much bigger thing. And for me, Reddit was a much bigger thing than FB.

I think amongst the antitrust trials, this one is the weakest.

BrtByte5• 1 year ago

Fair take, but I think the key distinction is why Instagram and WhatsApp were targeted specifically

zeroonetwothree2• 1 year ago

I feel the spirit of antitrust being for the benefit of consumers has been lost with the recent round of actions. Virtually every action a corporation takes is “anticompetitive” because surely it wants to defeat the competition. That’s the whole point of capitalism. We shouldn’t be concerned until this is actually anti consumer. And it’s hard to prove consumer harm for free products that aren’t really necessary and have many alternatives.

NHQ• 1 year ago

This trial is but a showcase for the berg zucker.

Legal proceedings focused on "social networks" and "browser market shares" and app stores. These are ridiculous, superficial, and meaningless.

If there was really such a thing as a monopoly on social networking, you would have to kick people off the networks, not just stop the companies operating them. What would change if instagram had to become its own company again? The same people would own it. And that is why antitrust is a joke, it does not prevent the true monopoly of who controls what.

the_clarence5• 1 year ago

What's the argument exactly? What prevents competition from starting a new social network or a new messaging app?

Indeed there is a huge number of successful messaging apps (imessage, signal, telegram, wire, wechat, kakao) and social networks (tiktok, snapchat, linkedin, reddit)

I know we're supposed to hate on facebook but what exactly is anti competitive?

gizmodo59• 1 year ago

I may be cynical but Zuck saw this happening and entirely shifted to appease current administration. Even having UFC CEO on board. No way they will breakup META.

techpineapple• 1 year ago

I dunno, maybe? But you don't even have to be cynical to observe that Mark has a lot of power, and he's an opportunist. I don't think the Repubs trust him, and do you really think that Mark has changed his stripes and doesn't try to cozy up to the next administration if he thinks there's another vibe shift? Also, it feels like that would be quite a scalp for Trump to brag about.

mrandish• 1 year ago

So Mark Z's recent $20M "donation" to Trump's presidential library apparently wasn't enough. This would all be much easier for everyone if there was an official rate card and price list.

beefnugs• 1 year ago

His payment will work just fine, this is to weed out all the judges that wont follow orders for purging

stackskipton2• 1 year ago

Shout out to https://www.bigtechontrial.com/ which covered Google Trial and is now covering Facebook trial.

Disclaimer: Matt Stoller is big on anti monopoly so he's in support of government in both cases but overall, his coverage is really good and more details than you will probably get from other outlets.

chalst• 1 year ago

Why the disclaimer? We know that monopolies make bad platform owners.

MPSFounder• 1 year ago

A recent HN article shows Facebook silenced Pro Palestine posts due to Israeli interference. The issue with Meta controlling so many social media outlets is control over information. A populace that is uninformed will welcome a master (and deserves one), and will look the other way when genocides and injustice take place in our world. The audience of HN is educated and unlikely to fall for misinformation. However, I have seen firsthand how anti-immigrant sentiments, racism and anti-muslim sentiment [1] can prosper when one man controls the flow of information, for they can steer public opinion in ways that are alien to our morals (and favors either their personal politics, their bottom dollar or other nefarious reasons). This is somewhat similar to the Sinclair family running identical stories on many TV stations they control to control narratives. However, Meta has much greater reach. Their role in allowing Russian interference in US elections for ad revenue has largely been forgotten, but Zuck played a role in spreading misinformation and allowing fake users (pretending to be Americans) to steer anger in the population, and allowed a foreign entity to spend their dollars favoring an American candidate (Election meddling). Ultimately, you can argue we must check our sources, but once again, HN is a small bubble. I know firsthand from Meta engineers that Facebook does practically nothing to stop Russian and Iranian threats and is in bed with the Israelis. I hope the FTC comes for their a--

[1] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-faceb...

worik• 1 year ago

A populace that is uninformed will welcome a master (and deserves one)

That parenthetical addition is a bit harsh!

zombiwoof5• 1 year ago

Everyone is missing the point: facts don’t matter

What matters is: if Donald Trump wants to break up Meta just for fun, nothing can stop him and he will do it. Just for fun

1vuio0pswjnm7• 1 year ago

https://archive.md/20250414152053/https://www.axios.com/pro/...

jfvinueza• 1 year ago

What has actually changed in the last 13 years regarding Whatsapp? Video. And I believe that's the reason why anyone hasn't actually challenged them regarding messaging: you can build a similar application with similar features with a rather small group of people (not saying it's easy, but it's feasible). But handling those pentabytes of bandwith shared every day? Actually _promoting_ the use of DIY video as the preferred communication media? That's something you can't do as an small shop. And that's, I think, why you cannot compete. I decided to quit Whatsapp, which in Latinamerica is quite an outrageous move: that application is the communication channel for EVERYTHING: all families, all schools, all neighborhoods. I did it because I think Meta's main metric is actually hostile to their users: they want as much of your time as they can get from you, and they'll use are sorts of psychological weaponry to keep you inside. They were actually vocal about it in the past. There's zero reason to trust them. But why is it that no one has come up with a true alternative (although props to Signal)? Well, there's the network effect, for sure. They also employ very good engineers. But I believe the true reason is scale: it didn't use to be that way, but infrastructure costs are now inmense.

xlinux• 1 year ago

I wish death to meta.its destroyed whole generation.

karhuton• 1 year ago

As someone who’s stuck with Whatsapp and no way out (friends and family won’t switch), I dearly hope for a split.

I do struggle to understand how we here casually lump tohether totally different platforms as comptetitors.

It’s not like I can use Youtube or Tiktok instead of Whatsapp with my family for direct and group discussion. Even X and Instagram would be a stretch, as their raison d’être is public social media and not instant messaging.

Sure the platforms have overlapping features, but you ain’t gonna use a knife insted of a spoon.

Spivak• 1 year ago

YouTube, X, and Tiktok compete with Meta's products in different verticals so it's not really a fair comparison. But at the same time WhatsApp is drowning in competition from a thousand different messengers so I'm not sure if this point really matters.

Like X isn't competing with FB Marketplace but Craigslist sure is. TikTok isn't competing with FB Events but Apple Events and Eventbrite are.

skydhash• 1 year ago

As long as WhatsApp have a strong backer like Meta, then using the term competition is meaningless. In many countries, WA is the de facto IM platform, but I can bet that it hasn't received a dim from those users. So how do they pay their developers, infrastructure, and surrounding resources?

spacebanana7• 1 year ago

Use email. Everyone has an email address and it's socially awkward for them if they don't respond. Also has all the benefits of being an open protocol rather than a corporate garden.

rreichman• 1 year ago

using an email for chat like people use whatsapp is not practical

rpgbr2• 1 year ago

[…] it's socially awkward for them if they don't respond

Out of corporate contexts, email is only used to register for services, newsletters, and recover passwords. It's a shame, I prefer email over messaging for anything non-urgent.

emsign2• 1 year ago

You're srewed either way if you live in the USA.

fransje262• 1 year ago

It’s not like I can use Youtube or Tiktok instead of Whatsapp with my family for direct and group discussion.

What's wrong with Signal? Or, worst-case scenario, Telegram?

emblaegh• 1 year ago

It’s hard to overstate the pervasiveness of WhatsApp in some some countries. Where I’m from work, service hiring, costumer service, etc are all conducted through (and specially for small businesses only though) WhatsApp.

Gasp0de• 1 year ago

What's the use case for using Telegram over Whatsapp? At least the latter has proper end-to-end encryption of content?

_fat_santa• 1 year ago

What's wrong with Signal? Or, worst-case scenario, Telegram?

IMO from a technical perspective nothing but more of how do you get your entire network to migrate from one chat app to another. Everyone here says just get your parents, siblings, friends to switch but it's far more complicated than that.

My wife is from Brazil and uses WA all the time. Getting her to switch would mean getting her entire network of family and friends to switch and you would have to make that pitch to everyone in the "network". All of a sudden it goes from getting a few people to switch to getting literally thousands to switch which is next to impossible.

BrtByte5• 1 year ago

Yeah, 100% agree - calling all these platforms "competitors" just because they exist on the same internet feels like tech company lawyer logic, not reality.

yodsanklai• 1 year ago

As someone who’s stuck with Whatsapp and no way out (friends and family won’t switch), I dearly hope for a split.

But what will it change for users? you'll still be stuck with What's app, except that it won't be owned by Meta.

valeg• 1 year ago

This seems like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yukos lite So much for Zuck's white flags and ring-kissing.

WhyNotHugo2• 1 year ago

Funny how Wikipedia articles for Russian oligarchs refer to them as "oligarch", but articles for US oligarchs refers to them as "businessman".

rib3ye• 1 year ago

Is it really lost on people that the POTUS owns a competing social network platform?

yard2010• 1 year ago

Lock em up for good. For everyone's sake.

emsign2• 1 year ago

Another scheme of the administration to blackmail a big company into submission. I'm not against sued a big company because of antitrust/monopoly but my fear is that Meta gets off the hook once Zuck jumps through Trump's hoops and sells out the customers to the new dictator.

BrtByte5• 1 year ago

Regardless of where you land on Meta's ethics, this case feels like a high-stakes stress test for retroactive antitrust enforcement. If the FTC succeeds here, it basically rewrites the "finality" of M&A decisions in tech... and that'll ripple way beyond Meta.

TimPC3• 1 year ago

I think the illegal monopoly claims are a bit out there given the range of offerings in the social network space. Are they arguing that Instagram specifically is a monopoly in photo-oriented social networking because X is mostly text and YouTube and TikTok is mostly video? I don't see any particular time you can point to where Facebook+Instagram+WhatsApp was a monoopoly in any sort of broad social networking space, especially not the WhatsApp part which competes with iMessage which is an absolute behemoth in terms of market share.

Meta antitrust trial kicks off in federal court

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