Meta wins antitrust trial as judge rules it is not a monopoly

Meta has won a major legal battle after five years of facing a U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) antitrust lawsuit centred on its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp.

In a decision released on Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg concluded that the FTC failed to prove Meta is currently violating antitrust laws through its 2012 purchase of Instagram for $1 billion and its 2014 acquisition of WhatsApp for $19 billion.

During the trial, the FTC presented internal communications showing that Meta — then operating as Facebook — saw Instagram’s rapid growth as a competitive threat.

An internal 2012 email from Mark Zuckerberg stated, “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, etc. now will give us a year or more to integrate their dynamics before anyone can get close to their scale again.”

However, Judge Boasberg emphasised that the case was not about whether Meta behaved like a monopoly at the time of the acquisitions, but whether it is a monopoly today. He pointed to TikTok and other apps as clear signs that Meta now operates in a competitive environment.

“The landscape that existed only five years ago when the Federal Trade Commission brought this antitrust suit has changed markedly,” Boasberg wrote. He added that the traditional distinction between social networking and social media has eroded, making Meta’s market position less dominant than alleged.