On Wednesday, New York Attorney General Letitia James announced a massive antitrust lawsuit against Facebook, claiming that the social network has hurt competition by buying smaller companies such as Instagram and WhatsApp. Forty-seven other state and regional attorneys general agree with the lawsuit.
The lawsuit focuses on his acquisitions Facebook, notably the $1 billion purchase of Instagram in 2011. In addition to the acquisition strategy, the attorneys general allege that Facebook used the power and reach of its platform to limit user growth on competing services.
“For nearly a decade, Facebook has used its dominance and monopoly power to crush smallerrivals and eliminate competition," James said at a press conference.
"Facebook used huge sums of money to gain potential rivals before threatening the company's dominance."
The Federal Trade Commission filed a separate lawsuit against Facebook for similar reasons, which was announced at the same time as the lawsuit. The FTC case explicitly asks the court to break the dominance of the social network, dividing the Instagram and WhatsApp services into two independent companies.
"Our goal is to reverse Facebook's anti-competitive behavior and restore competition so that innovation and free competition thrive." said Ian Conner, Director of the FTC Competition Office.
Facebook, on the other hand, claims that both acquisitions were made in consultation with regulators and that their overthrow would be a dangerous precedent. "Years after the FTC approved our acquisitions, the government θέλει τώρα μια αλλαγή χωρίς να λαμβάνει υπόψη τον αντίκτυπο που θα είχε το προηγούμενο στην ευρύτερη επιχειρηματική κοινότητα ή στους ανθρώπους που επιλέγουν τα productour daily", says the company.
Another aspect of the antitrust lawsuit is whether the companies' acquisition of Facebook made the product worse for consumers - especially in terms of privacy.
Facebook has long claimed that its resources and scale are responsible for turning applications such as Instagram and WhatsApp into giant platforms with billions of users. However, researchers are considering how to market it, for example WhatsApp from Facebook and his decision to use WhatsApp user data later may have harmed consumers and ruined competitors 'competition by exploiting users' privacy.
