Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta and the US Federal Trade Commission are set to face each other in a federal court this month as part of a landmark antitrust trial.
Ahead of the April 14 trial, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has reportedly met the US president recently in an attempt to avoid a court trial which could result in the tech giant being forced to unwind its acquisition of WhatsApp and Instagram.
Meta is keen to avoid a trial that could see Zuckerberg, as well as former chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg and rival leaders at TikTok, Snap and YouTube be forced to testify.
The FTC suit alleges Facebook “is illegally maintaining its personal social networking monopoly through a years-long course of anticompetitive conduct.” The complaint said Facebook put together a deliberate strategy to “eliminate threats to its monopoly.”
The trial comes more than four years after the FTC first sued Facebook over allegedly maintaining an illegal monopoly, reported the Financial Times.
The antitrust regulator during Trump’s first presidency accused the group of quashing nascent competition by buying up rivals Instagram and WhatsApp, made in 2012 and 2014, for $1billion (A$1.66 billion) and $19 billion (A$35.57 billion) respectively, and asked for the deals to be unwound.
FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson has been to demonstrate that the agency he now oversees will not deal leniently with Big Tech. In an interview with Bloomberg last month, Ferguson said, “We don’t intend to sort of take our foot off the gas,” he said referring to the Meta case. “We’re gearing up for trial. We’ve got some of the FTC’s best lawyers on it, and we’re getting ready to go. This trial has been five years in the making.”
Meta has taken steps over the last few months to seemingly align itself with President Donald Trump. In January, the company settled a lawsuit filed by Trump a few years earlier over its decision to suspend his accounts. Meta agreed to pay $25 million (A$41.54 million), of which $22 (A$36.55 million) was earmarked for a fund for Trump’s presidential library.
Zuckerberg also scrapped Meta’s content-moderation policies which were criticized by Trump, as well as its diversity initiatives.
