Meta Faces Antitrust Lawsuit: Could Instagram and WhatsApp Be Separated Forever?
TikTok is an app that has always been in hot water because of the US and China conflicts. But it seems like another popular social media giant is getting into trouble. Yes, you read it right. Meta, owner of WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram, will face the antitrust lawsuit in the US court.
The Federal Trade Commission filed a case accusing Meta of unfairly blocking social media alternatives from making inroads. Moreover, it has the potential to force the California-based company to divest from Instagram and WhatsApp.
Meta Faces Antitrust Lawsuit: Could Instagram and WhatsApp Be Separated Forever?
“Rather than outcompeting its rivals on the merits of its social networking offering (Facebook), Meta chose to protect its position through anti-competitive means,” reads the FTC’s pretrial brief, filed.
Mark Zuckerberg acquired Instagram and WhatsApp in 2012 and 2014, respectively. His timely acquisition helped to build his huge social media empire. Now, Meta has billions of active users worldwide.
Now, after so many years, the US Federal Trade Commission is targeting those deals in a landmark antitrust lawsuit. The lawsuit claimed that the acquisitions were illegal. Moreover, they should never have been approved and should be broken up.
A breakup would disrupt some of the world’s most popular digital products, undo the market leader’s years of integration between the apps and Facebook, and raise serious questions about how the government evaluates and approves deals.
Meta has a $1.3 trillion market capital. The company mostly rely on advertising revenue from Instagram. Now, a breakup means erasing hundreds of billions of dollars in market value.
Similarly, when billions of users are already using these apps, how will Meta manage this disaster if it loses the case? Meta has already integrated all its apps into one another. Whatsapp, Instagram and Facebook are all joined together. Users can switch directly from one app to another. If the deal splits up, the integration will be gone. Then how will Meta manage this integration without disturbing its users? All this seems to be seen in the near future.
On the other hand, Meta is quite optimistic regarding this situation. Meta said in a statement that it’s “confident the evidence will show that the Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions have been good for competition and consumers.” The company also blasted the FTC for challenging the deals more than a decade later.
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“The Trump-Vance FTC could not be more prepared for this trial,” said FTC spokesman Joe Simonson. “This agency is staffed with some of the most talented and hardworking attorneys in the country.”
This is not the only case in which Meta is tussling with the FTC. The FTC is also accusing Meta of violating the terms of a 2019 privacy settlement under which the company paid a record $5 billion penalty to resolve allegations it violated an earlier agreement focused on its data security practices. Meta is also facing a related investor lawsuit in Delaware later this summer.
It seems like Meta has to go along with many lawsuits this year. But the most important case is the cancellation of the WhatsApp and Instagram deals. The coming days are so important for all of us. Let’s wait and see in what direction the case will go.
