• by Wendy Davis , Yesterday

Siding against the Federal Trade Commission, a federal judge has dismissed the agency's antitrust lawsuit alleging that Meta Platforms monopolized a supposed market for "personal social networking services."

"Meta holds no monopoly in the relevant market," U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg in Washington, D.C. wrote in an 89-page opinion issued Tuesday.

The ruling came in a lawsuit brought by the FTC in 2020, when it claimed that Meta's acquisition of Instagram (purchased for $1 billion in 2012 when Meta was known as Facebook at the time) and WhatsApp (bought for $19 billion in 2014) enabled the company to maintain a monopoly.

The agency claimed both purchases were part of an illegal “buy-or-bury scheme” that allowed the platform to preserve its dominance in the “personal social networking market.”

Boasberg held a trial earlier this year, after which Meta argued in a post-trial brief that the evidence showed there was no separate market for "personal social networking services."

Instead, Meta contended, the evidence at trial showed that Meta had "evolved into a diverse global provider of entertaining and informative content" that competes with social apps such as TikTok and YouTube.

The FTC had urged Boasberg to find that Facebook and Instagram serve different "core purposes" than TikTok or YouTube, contending that Facebook and Instagram focus on connecting users with friends and family, but TikTok and YouTube are focused on entertainment.

Boasberg agreed with Meta, writing: "The Court ultimately finds that YouTube and TikTok belong in the product market, and they prevent Meta from holding a monopoly."

He wrote that the social media landscape "changed markedly" since the FTC filed suit five years ago, noting TikTok's emergence in recent years as a competitor to Facebook.

Boasberg added that his prior written rulings in the case -- issued in 2021, 2022 and 2024 -- "did not even mention the word" TikTok, but that today "that app holds center stage as Meta’s fiercest rival."

The FTC sued soon after a Democratic majority report from the House Subcommittee on Antitrust said Facebook used its “data advantage” to identify nascent competitors and then “acquire, copy, or kill” them.

At trial, the agency attempted to prove both that Meta monopolizes the "personal social networking" market, and that the company's alleged monopoly allowed it to degrade users' experience by increasing the ad load on its services. Meta countered that it has never charged U.S. users for Facebook or Instagram, and that the FTC failed to prove that more ads resulted in a worse experience for users.

Boasberg not only held that the FTC failed to prove that Meta monopolized the personal social networking market, but also said the FTC hadn't shown that ads on Facebook and Instagram degraded users' experience.

"The effect of ads on users’ experience depends on not only their number but also on their quality and relevance," he wrote.

"An ad that is attractive, engaging, unobtrusive, and shows a user something that he wants imposes a much lower cost than an ad that is unsightly, disruptive, and irrelevant," he continued, adding that the evidence shows that the quality of ads has gone up.

"Meta generally does not increase ad load until its ads have improved -- that way, the company can sell more ads without pushing users away from its apps," he wrote.

Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who has proposed new antitrust laws that would take aim at large tech companies, stated Tuesday that she disagrees with the ruling and hopes the FTC will appeal.

"The court’s opinion makes clear that our laws are not keeping pace with advances in technology and that we must pass legislation to take on tech monopolists and return competition to digital markets,” she stated.