The president of the Federal Commerce Commission, Andrew Ferguson, prevents the beginning of the antimonopoly case of the Meta Agency and details the Dregulator Agenda of the Trump Administration.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg He appeared in the Federal Court on Monday to testify the first day of a historical antimonopoly case against his company, one that accuses Zuckerberg and other senior leadership of illegally buying smaller applications such as Instagram and WhatsApp to create a monopoly of social networks.
The lawyers of the Federal Trade Commission said in the opening comments on Monday that they will seek to prove, during the course of the hearing, which tarks Bought Instagram and WhatsApp as part of a so -called “buy or bury” strategy used to turn off competition and alternatives, especially applications that it considers a threat to its platform.
“They decided that the competition was too difficult, and it would be easier to buy their rivals instead of competing with them,” FTC lawyer Daniel Matheson said Monday.
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The Court of E. Barrett Prettyman in the United States court is seen as the United States Court of Appeals in Washington, DC. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
For more than a decade, he argued, this strategy allowed the goal to buy its competition for the market value well above the market, establishing the so -called “entry barriers” to protect their domain from social networks.
Matheson and the FTC are accusing the goal of using the strategy to win the monopoly of the so -called “personal social networks”.
If it succeeds, the FTC would probably seek the court to order a goal to restructure your company, or disintegrate the companies acquired, including Instagram and WhatsApp.
The victory would be a remarkable victory for the federal government at a time when it has struggled to prevail in the judicial challenges that involve Silicon Valley and its complex network of new companies that shot, apparently during the night, in the main companies.
Meta is worth $ 1.4 billion. If the FTC lawyers prevail in their antiponopoly demand against Meta, it would be the greatest dissolution of an American company since the government ordered the breakdown of AT&T in the early 1980s.
Mark Zuckerberg, Executive Director of Meta Platforms Inc., Centro, arrives at the 60th presidential inauguration in the roundabout of the United States Capitol in Washington, DC, USA UU., On Monday, January 20, 2025. (Shawn Thew/EPA/Bloomberg through Getty Images/Getty Images)
Despite the long tail of the lawsuit, which is expected to develop in the Federal Court until the beginning of the summer, the FTC lawyers wasting little time on Monday by calling their first witness, Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg, at the stand.
There, Zuckerberg was roasted by the emails he sent regarding the purchase of Instagram and WhatsApp in 2012 and 2014, respectively.
In the 2012 email, Zuckerberg said Instagram had seen such a fast growth that his own company “had” to buy it, in Matheson’s teeth.
“It is an email written by someone who recognized Instagram as a threat and was forced to sacrifice one billion dollars because Meta could not meet that threat through competition,” Matheson said.
He also faced questions about the Facebook transformation, which the FTC said it originated as a site designed to facilitate pairs to one that showed more third -party content, including news and group activity.
“Over time, the ‘interest’ part of that has been built more than the part of ‘friend’,” Zuckerberg said in response.
Zuckerberg said users are now “connected with many more groups and other types of things” compared to their first days.
“The part of ‘Friend’ has lowered a lot, but it is still something that matters to us,” he said.
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Jason Citron, CEO of Discord, Evan Spiegel, CEO of Snap, Shou Zi Chew, CEO of Tiktok, Linda Yaccarino, CEO of X, and Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta Meak On as they testify to the Judicial Committee of the Senate in 2024 (Alex Wong / Getty images / getty images)
Meanwhile, Meta’s lawyer, Mark Hansen, sought to dismiss the case in his opening comments a “grip bag” of FTC theories “in the war with the law.”
“The facts will demonstrate that FTC theories are wrong,” Hansen told us Judge James BoasbergThe President Judge at the trial.
Meta lawyers have tried to dispute the description of the FTC of the so -called “personal social networks” applications, and argued that their group of competitors is much larger, which extends to companies such as Tiktok, LinkedIn and others.
During the audience, Boasberg listened carefully and took notes, sometimes intervened to ask questions or ask additional details.
The banking trial will be decided by a single judge, in this case, Judge Boasberg, and is expected to last about eight weeks.
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Later this week, the Court is expected to listen to other former target officials, with witnesses, including former head of Operations Sheryl Sandberg, former technology director Andrew Bosworth and others.
