Overview
- U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ruled the FTC failed to prove Meta currently holds monopoly power in social networking.
- The decision rejects the FTC’s requested remedy of divesting Instagram and WhatsApp.
- Boasberg pointed to evidence that users substitute TikTok and YouTube for Facebook and Instagram, driven by a broader shift to video.
- The court criticized the FTC for offering no empirical substitution evidence to support its market-definition theory.
- The case, filed five years ago, went to trial in April and featured testimony from Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg and Kevin Systrom, and the outcome is a setback for the FTC’s broader tech enforcement push.