Facebook-owner Meta won a landmark lawsuit Tuesday when a federal judge ruled the company’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp don’t violate US antitrust law. The big win over the Trump administration comes at an interesting time for Meta Chairman Mark Zuckerberg, who has spent more than a year sidling up to the Republican president. The lawsuit was filed by Trump’s first administration back in 2020. Finally reaching trial in April, government lawyers argued Meta bought the two companies rather than compete with them. Meta countered that its competitors extend far beyond friends sharing cat snaps to instead include video, commerce and private messaging. US District Judge James Boasberg in Washington said the Federal Trade Commission failed to prove the deals allowed the tech giant to illegally monopolize the social networking market. One strange dynamic underlying the case is that Zuckerberg has appeared to go out of his way both publicly and financially to please the 79-year-old Trump. He’s also pushed through key corporate and product changes Trump favors—like eliminating hate speech rules and dismantling diversity and outside fact-checking efforts. (Making things stranger, federal investigators famously said Facebook was a key venue for Russian efforts aimed at sowing discord and tipping presidential elections in Trump’s favor.) One avenue for a government appeal (should it want to) would be tied to the judge’s focus on the market today rather than 2020 when the case was filed, said Rebecca Haw Allensworth of Vanderbilt Law School. In a normal administration, an appeal would be likely given the money and resources already spent, she said. But there’s no guarantee that will happen this time. “The Trump administration isn’t making decisions on competition policy alone,” she said. |
Mark Zuckerberg’s Big Win
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