At monopoly trial, Zuckerberg redefined social media as texting with friends
The Meta monopoly trial has raised a question that Meta hopes the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) can’t effectively answer: How important is it to use social media to connect with friends and family today?
Connecting with friends was, of course, Facebook’s primary use case as it became the rare social network to hit 1 billion users—not by being acquired by a Big Tech company but based on the strength of its clean interface and the network effects that kept users locked in simply because all the important people in their life chose to be there.
According to the FTC, Meta took advantage of Facebook’s early popularity, and it has since bought out rivals and otherwise cornered the market on personal social networks. Only Snapchat and MeWe (a privacy-focused Facebook alternative) are competitors to Meta platforms, the FTC argues, and social networks like TikTok or YouTube aren’t interchangeable, because those aren’t destinations focused on connecting friends and family.
Related Knowledge Center: The Meta-FTC trial
The Federal Trade Commission charges that Meta monopolized social networking via Facebook’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp. The trial concluded in May and now awaits a judge’s opinion in the U.S. District Court for D.C. The case is being closely watched as other antitrust lawsuits target Google and Apple.
Media and the law | Social media