Meta Acquisitions in Saturated Social Media World Within Bounds: Judge

A U.S. judge this week ruled that Meta’s long-ago acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp did not violate antitrust law, because the industry has many players and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) failed to prove its case that Meta had monopolized the social networking market, Andrew Nusca reported for Fortune Tech.

The FTC can appeal, but said only that it was reviewing its options. (Photo: Facebook) 

Each of Meta’s services enjoys millions of users; they collectively drive tens of billions of dollars of ad revenue each quarter, the company argued.

The addressable market was much broader than the handful of remaining social media companies founded earlier. What’s more, Meta was seeing its grip on users’ attention weaken in the face of competition from TikTok and others.

“With apps surging and receding, chasing one craze and moving on from others, and adding new features with each passing year, the FTC has understandably struggled to fix the boundaries of Meta’s product market,” wrote U.S. District Judge James Boasberg.

The FTC can appeal, but said only that it was reviewing its options.