Overview
- U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ruled the FTC failed to show Meta currently holds monopoly power, ending the bid to unwind the Instagram and WhatsApp deals.
- The court defined the market to include TikTok and, in parts of the opinion, YouTube, finding that their competition defeats the FTC’s monopoly theory.
- Trial evidence showed users now spend about 17% of Facebook time and 7% of Instagram time on friends’ posts, with AI-recommended short videos making the platforms substitutes for TikTok and YouTube.
- The ruling follows a spring bench trial that featured testimony from Mark Zuckerberg and scrutiny of internal emails, but the judge focused on present market power rather than past conduct.
- The FTC can still appeal, a prospect viewed as significant for the agency’s broader antitrust push that has recently produced wins against Google.