The Federal Trade Commission is urging an appellate court to revive charges that Meta violated antitrust law by monopolizing a market for “personal social networking services.”
U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg in Washington, D.C. dismissed the case last year, ruling that Meta isn’t a monopoly because it currently competes with YouTube and
TikTok.
The FTC late last week asked the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse that decision for several reasons. Among other arguments, the FTC says the Sherman Antitrust
Act only required the agency to prove that Meta monopolized a market when the case was filed.
The agency’s appeal comes in a battle dating to December 2020, when the FTC claimed that Meta’s acquisition of Instagram (purchased for $1 billion in
2012) and WhatsApp (bought for $19 billion in 2014) enabled the company to maintain a monopoly. The agency alleged that both purchases were part of an illegal “buy-or-bury scheme” that
allowed the platform to preserve its dominance in the “personal social networking market.”
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Boasberg held a trial last year, after which Meta argued in a post-trial brief that the evidence failed to establish a separate market for “personal social networking services.”
Instead, Meta contended, the evidence at trial showed that Meta had “evolved into a diverse global provider of entertaining and informative content” that competes with social apps
such as TikTok and YouTube.
The FTC had urged
Boasberg to find that Facebook and Instagram serve different “core purposes” than TikTok or YouTube, contending that Facebook and Instagram focus on connecting users with friends and family, but
TikTok and YouTube are focused on entertainment.
Boasberg sided with Meta, ruling that YouTube and TikTok are in the same “product market” as Meta, and therefore prevent the
company from holding a monopoly.
He wrote that the social media landscape “changed markedly” since the FTC filed suit, noting TikTok’s emergence as a competitor to Facebook.
Boasberg added that his prior written rulings in the matter — issued in 2021, 2022 and 2024 — “did not even mention the word” TikTok, but that today “that app holds center stage as Meta’s
fiercest rival.”
The FTC now argues that requiring it to prove that an antitrust defendant currently holds a monopoly “would improperly deprive courts of the power to remedy
past unlawful action even if it threatens to recur or continues to cause grievous harm.”
In addition to arguing that the key question is whether Meta held a monopoly in the
past, the FTC also says TikTok’s growth between 2020 and 2025 is “irrelevant.”
“TikTok does not meaningfully serve the demand for friends-and-family sharing, and Meta
comfortably maintained its vise grip on that market,” the commission contends.
Meta is expected to file its response by August 20.
