Dead CEO Mark Zuckerberg moved to the witness platform on the first day of aHistorical monopoly experience experienceTo defend his company against allegations that it illegally monopolizes the social media market.
The experiment can force the technology giant to cut Instagram and WhatsApp, and has bought Startups Meta more than a decade ago, which has grown since then to social media forces.
FTC Lawyer Daniel Matthesson called as the first witness, as he seeks to prove that Meta acquired Instagram and WhatsApp to maintain its monopoly in the social media space.
In the trial, Matheson focused on a communication that was sent to colleagues who made clear Zuckerberg because he did not advance in developing an application to share images to compete with Instagram.
Zuckerberg said: “The way I read this message is that I am not happy with how we are implementing this project,” Zuckerberg said.
Matthesson continued to ask if it was due to the rapid growth of Instagram.
“This seems to be what he highlighted,” Zuckerberg said, adding that he always urges his team to do better.
Later in the day, Zuckerberg seemed frustrated when Matheson asked him about his concerns about the rapid Instagram growth.
“I do not have a full schedule for Instagram development in my head,” Zuckerberg said, when Matthekes asked about his remembrance. “Maybe you can get this better than someone else.”
Matheson also asked about plans to maintain Instagram, with a focus on Facebook and not to invest in Instagram. Zuckerberg said he would not describe it as a plan, and insisted that Instagram was not neglected.
“In practice, we ended up investing a ton after we acquired it,” said Zuckerberg, who witnessed most of the afternoon.
In the opening data, Matheson said that Meta used its site to generate enormous profits even with a decrease in consumer satisfaction. He said Meta was “spending a trench” to protect his interests by buying startups.
Mita’s lawyer Mark Hansen said that FTC makes a “seizure bag” on the wrong arguments. He said that Meta has a lot of competition and has improved the startups they gained.
“This lawsuit, in short, is misleading,” Hansen said, adding: “In any case, you look at it, the adult winning consumers were.”
The trial will be the first major test of President Donald Trump’s Federal Trade Committee’s ability to challenge large technology. The lawsuit was filed against Meta – then it is called Facebook – in 2020, during the first period of Trump. It claims that the company bought Instagram and WhatsApp for competing squash and creating illegal monopoly in the social media market.
FTC argues that META maintained a monopoly by following the Zuckerberg strategy, “Expressed in 2008:” It is better to buy from competition. “
FTC has submitted policies designed to make it difficult for young competitors to enter the market and “neutralize competitive threats,” says FTC in its complaint, just as the world turned its attention to mobile devices from desktop computers.
Buy Facebook Instagram-then apply the sharing of amazing images without ads and small follow-ups-in 2012. The price of the joyful purchase of $ 1 billion was at that time, although the value of the deal decreased to 750 million dollars after the Facebook price decreased after its first year offer in May 2012.
Instagram was the first company to purchase on Facebook and continued to run it as a separate application. Until then, Facebook is famous for the younger “Have-Heres”-a kind of famous silicon valley deal in which the company buys a startup as a way to employ its talented workers, then closes the acquired company. Two years later, I did it again with the WhatsApp application, which is thatIt was purchased for $ 22 billion.
WhatsApp and Instagram Facebook helped transfer his business from desktop computers to mobile devices, and stay common among young generations as competitors like Snapchat (This is what he also tried, but he failed to buy) and Tiktok appeared. However, FTC has a narrow definition of Meta’s competitive market, with the exception of companies like Tiktok, YouTube Apple correspondence service is considered competitors to Instagram and WhatsApp.
At the same time, Meta says FTC’s suit “challenges reality”.
“Evidence in the trial will show what every 17 -year -old child knows in the world: Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp compete with Chinese, YouTube, YouTube, xIMessage and many others. After more than 10 years have passed since the FTC review and our acquisitions, the committee’s procedure in this case sends a message that there is no final deal at all. “The American organizers should support innovation, instead of seeking to dismantle a great American company and more Chinese advantages on critical issues such as artificial intelligence,” the company said in a statement.
In a file last week, Meta also confirmed that FTC “must prove that Meta has a monopolistic force in its relevant market now, not at some point in the past.” This, experts say, can also prove a challenge because more competitors have appeared in the social media field in the years when the company has bought WhatsApp and Instagram.
The fate of Meta will be determined by the American boycott judge James Boasberg, who in late last year denied Meta to obtain a brief judgment and decided that the case should go to the trial.
Although FTC may face an arduous battle in proving its cause, the risks are high for Meta, whose advertising works can be reduced in half if it is forced to leave Instagram.
Meta is not the only technological company in the scenes of federal monopoly organizations, Google and Amazon Facing their own situations. The Google case treatment stage is scheduled to start on April 21. A federal judge announced that the research giantIllegal monopolyLast August.
This story was originally shown on Fortune.com
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