Meta will face antitrust trial over Instagram, WhatsApp acquisitions

Facebook owner Meta Platforms must face trial in a U.S. Federal Trade Commission lawsuit seeking its break-up over claims that it bought Instagram and WhatsApp to crush emerging competition in social media, a judge in Washington ruled on Wednesday.

Judge James Boasberg largely denied Meta's motion to end the case filed against Facebook in 2020, during the Trump administration, alleging that the company acted illegally to maintain its social network monopoly.

Meta, then known as Facebook, overpaid for Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014 to eliminate nascent threats instead of competing on its own in the mobile ecosystem, the FTC claims.

Boasberg let that claim 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 on Wednesday.

FTC spokesperson Douglas Farrar said that 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."

Tough legal battle awaits

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 on 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 take into account 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.