Tech and Antitrust Trials Don’t Mix

Antitrust trials and tech businesses don’t mix well. As was the case with the government’s ad tech case against Google last year, as well as its case against Meta Platforms, which went to trial in a Washington courtroom today, the lawsuits typically rest on years-old snapshots of an industry that are about as current as a picture you took of your three-year-old who just celebrated their 21st birthday. 

Thus we have a Federal Trade Commission case against Meta’s dominance of social media that rests on its acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp more than a dozen years ago. Leave aside the obvious point that when Meta did those deals, Instagram in particular was not the juggernaut it is today. There is the salient point that in the past decade, TikTok has become such a force in social media that President Donald Trump is pulling out all the stops to keep it alive—despite a law passed last year that would ban it if it stays under China’s control—because he believes it helped him win reelection. (For our coverage of the trial’s opening day, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony, see here, here and here.)