Following explosive accusations about Mark Zuckerberg‘s Meta working “hand in glove with Beijing,” jeopardising US national security and betraying American values, the antitrust trial against the social media giant begins in Washington on Monday.
In light of a nearly six-year investigation drowning Meta in legal turmoil, the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) trial against Zuckerberg’s tech giant could flip its monopoly in the market. Further accused of pushing out competition by buying Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014, Meta may be left with no choice but to divest of its expansive business network’s branches.
Allegations against Mark Zuckerberg, Meta
Although the government agency originally approved Meta’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp, the ongoing case threatens the company’s future stance. Mark Zuckerberg is also in hot water over possibly using his connection with President Donald Trump to request the FTC to drop the antitrust trial case, according to the Wall Street Journal. While Meta has denied the claim, ex-Meta executive turned whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams recently testified against Zuckerberg and the company before the US Senate.
As former director of global policy who was with Meta since 2017, Wynn-Williams has worked with major execs, including Zuckerberg, Chief Global Affairs Office Joel Kaplan and ex-Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg.
Alleging that Meta’s ties with the Chinese Communist Party started “as early as 2015,” she testified on Wednesday, “I saw Meta executives repeatedly undermine US national security and betray American values. They did these things in secret to win favour with Beijing and build an $18 billion in China.”
“The Chinese Communist Party and Mark Zuckerberg share a common goal of silencing their critics. I can attest to this from my own experience,” she added.
Her testimony only adds to the pool of extensive evidence and other witnesses speaking up against Mark Zuckerberg and his company, branding them as untrustworthy. In addition to the Meta CEO, Sandberg and Instagram head Adam Mosseri are expected to be called to the stand during the trial, as per NPR.
How Meta responded to FTC’s Antitrust trial
Slamming the FTC lawsuit, Meta spokesperson Christopher Sgro previously said in a statement that its “defies reality.” He went on, “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.”
Sgro added, “More than 10 years after the FTC reviewed and cleared our acquisitions, the Commission’s action in this case sends the message that no deal is ever truly final.”
Mark Zuckerberg to argue against Meta selling off Instagram: Expert
Meanwhile, experts believe that Meta will vehemently argue against FTC’s charges that it bought Instagram and WhatsApp only to kill social media competition in the market. They told BBC that the argument is expected to be built around claims that Instagram users have only rejoiced since the company took over.
“The [FTC’s] argument is the acquisition of Instagram was a way of neutralizing this rising competitive threat to Facebook,” said Rebecca Haw Allensworth, a professor of antitrust at Vanderbilt Law School. She also noted that Zuckerberg’s own emails could work against him in the trial.
“He said it’s better to buy than to compete. It’s hard to get more literal than that,” she explained. “They’re going to say the real question is: are consumers better off as a result of this merger? They’ll put on a lot of evidence that Instagram became what it is today because it benefited from being owned by Facebook.”
About the FTC v Meta lawsuit
This case was filed during Donald Trump’s first administration. Prasad Krishnamurthy, a law professor at UC Berkeley Law, said that the high-stakes trial will test the boundaries of the US’ antitrust laws related to corporate acquisitions, as per CNBC. “It’s a big case because it involves Meta, a social media giant, and it involves one of the most important kind of markets in the world, the social media market,” he added. “It has big implications for something that consumers use as part of their daily life, Instagram and WhatsApp.”
As the FTC pushes back against Meta’s acquisition of Instagram for $1 billion and WhatsApp for $19 billion in the 2010s, it stated in a legal filing, “Acquiring these competitive threats has enabled Facebook to sustain its dominance—to the detriment of competition and users—not by competing on the merits, but by avoiding competition.”
To disprove Zuckerberg and Meta’s credibility, FTC will have to show that the company monopolised the social media market in addition to “harming” competition. In 2021, Judge James Boasberg dismissed the case. However, following amended filings, he ruled the case could proceed in 2022. His initial dismissal of it was based on the agency not having enough evidence to prove “Facebook holds market power.”