The FTC is watching Facebook’s VR buys
One of the oldest arguments against breaking Facebook up was that the market would eventually end the company’s dominance anyway, and likely much faster than any lawsuit could. There’s no doubt that Facebook is still dominant in social networking. But there are cracks in its armor.
All of which makes it notable that while Boasberg allowed the case to proceed, he wrote that “the agency may well face a tall task down the road in proving its allegations.” Over and over again in the 48-page complaint, he notes that he is not yet allowed to assess the accuracy of the facts presented in the FTC’s case. Instead, his job is to determine whether the facts, if true, make for plausible allegations of wrongdoing. And at this point, he decides, they do.
But 2014 was a long time ago. And the coming lawsuit and inevitable appeals will stretch out for many more years. At this point, even if the governmentsuccessfully force a spinout of Instagram and WhatsApp, those companies will be reborn into a world that is moving on. The good news for consumers, and for competition, is that the FTC is moving on, too. Even if this lawsuit fails in the end, by filing it the agency has signaled that it will intensely scrutinize any future efforts by Meta to acquire other social networking products. And as new social networks rise up in the future, the lessons learned from Instagram and WhatsApp will almost certainly inspire much more rigorous reviews of future acquisitions in the space.