Meta goes to trial to avoid a breakup of Instagram and WhatsApp

On Monday, Meta will face the Federal Trade Commission in a legal fight that could reshape the social media landscape. Over the next two months, the US government will make its case that the companyâs 2012 acquisition of Instagram and 2014 acquisition of WhatsApp squashed potential threats to its dominance. Meta, which went by the […]

Apr 11, 2025 - 16:51

Meta goes to trial to avoid a breakup of Instagram and WhatsApp

On Monday, Meta will face the Federal Trade Commission in a legal fight that could reshape the social media landscape.

Over the next two months, the US government will make its case that the companyâs 2012 acquisition of Instagram and 2014 acquisition of WhatsApp squashed potential threats to its dominance. Meta, which went by the name of Facebook at the time, will defend itself by arguing that it helped grow those acquisitions into large businesses used by billions of people while facing plenty of competition along the way. The companyâs senior executives, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg and former COO Sheryl Sandberg, are expected to testify during the trial in Washington, DC.

The trial itself has been a long time coming. Itâs based on a lawsuit filed under the first Trump administration and then amended under the Biden administration, seeking solutions as dramatic as unwinding Meta’s big mergers. Itâs the third US trial attempting to bust up Big Tech in two years, following the Justice Departmentâs successful case against Googleâs search business and a second one pending a decision against its ad tech business. It kicks off amid a broad rethinking of how antitrust …

Read the full story at The Verge.