Highlights:
- Facebook challenges the US Government’s antitrust case
- Facebooks is seeking the case to be shelved in the court
- The case claims that Facebook has shifted competition to “maintain its monopoly”
The social media giant Facebook has challenged the landmark antitrust lawsuit against it by the US Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC). The Mark Zuckerberg owned social media firm asked a judge to throw out the case, calling it “nonsensical” in its complaint.
The FTC’s lawsuit accused Facebook of anti-competitive behaviour and has requested the court to break up Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp as well as Instagram.
In a blog post, Facebook said, “The FTC has not alleged facts amounting to a plausible antitrust case. The FTC’s case against Facebook ignores the reality of the dynamic, intensely competitive high-tech industry in which Facebook operates”.
The company also claims that the FTC has not “plausibly alleged unlawful exclusionary conduct”, and that it has failed to establish how Facebook is monopoly power.
Additionally, the lawsuit also reiterates a complaint which Facebook has repeated several time since December.
In the blog post, Facebook said, “The states waited far too long to act — far longer than the four years that is the outer limit of the yardstick for laches when states and private parties sue under federal antitrust laws,” the post also said, “Facebook would be unfairly prejudiced if the case were allowed to proceed,”.
The US FTC along with 45 other states sued Facebook alleging anti-competitive behaviours back in December 2020.
The case which is being claimed to be a historic case poised to shape the future of tech regulation in the United State, which in turn will affect how the Giant Tech platforms like Facebook are regulated around the globe. The suit alleges that Facebook stifled competition to “maintain its monopoly” and “roll back Facebook’s anticompetitive conduct and restore competition”.
At the crux, the US government wants to break WhatsApp and Instagram from Facebook and keep these companies from sharing the data with each other.
You can check the blog post from Facebook here: Facebook Files Motions to Dismiss Lawsuits Brought by FTC, State Attorneys General
Facebook is not the only tech giant who is facing the US Govternmanet’s ire, another tech giant, Google, is facing no less than 3 antitrust cases in the US which also accuses the company of antitrust behaviour.
These cases target Google’s core businesses including Search and Digital Advertising.
Google has also been accused of abusing its dominance with Android to pressure other device makers to preload Google apps on their smartphones.
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Even Amazon is facing antitrust cases in the US with its small acquisitions in recent years which include companies working on everything from internet-connected smart home and networking devices to cloud-computing applications that were folded into the Amazon Web Services division. Among them is a members-only retail site called BuyVIP, cloud computing startup E8 Storage and Eero Inc., a Wi-Fi system maker.
The company’s biggest acquisition was Whole Foods back in 2017 for $13.6 billion which received regulatory approval. Amazon declined to comment on the FTC’s orders.
