Other articles posted about this:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/14/technology/meta-antitrust... (https://archive.ph/8wOPP)

https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/14/media/meta-ftc-trial/index.ht...

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/13/meta-zuckerberg-ftc...

(I've omitted the HN links this time because there weren't any comments yet. Someday we're going to do proper URL bundling and karma sharing for cases like this, where multiple submitters post good articles on the same underlying story.)

> "The FTC's lawsuit against Meta defies reality. The evidence at trial will show what every 17-year-old in the world knows: Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp compete with Chinese-owned TikTok, YouTube, X, iMessage and many others," Meta spokesperson Chris Sgro said in a statement.

Everyone knew at the time that Facebook bought Instagram because it threatened Facebook's dominance, and hindsight shows that exactly that happened. There's a huge swath of people that dropped off FB and now use Insta, but Meta owns both. It was a great move but it was absolutely anti-competitive at the time.

I think Whatsapp is the clearest possible case that can be made of any company? They violated the condition of not sharing user data with Facebook

Willing to listen to other opinions on other companies, but surely Whatsapp

I wouldn’t write off a leniency due to their aforementioned arse kissing. A trial doesn’t mean a they’ll be found guilty, let alone given any tangible consequences.