The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has initiated a legal case against Meta, accusing the company of forming an illegal monopoly in social media by acquiring Instagram and WhatsApp. The U.S. antitrust agency aims to demonstrate the necessity of reversing these deals. This was reported by Reuters.

According to the FTC, these acquisitions were intended to eliminate competitors that could threaten Facebook’s dominant status in social media. The lawsuit was filed in 2020 during Donald Trump's presidency.

Meta's legal chief, Jennifer Newstead, described the case in her blog as weak and detrimental to investments in technology.

"It is absurd that the FTC is trying to dismantle a large American company while the administration is attempting to support the Chinese TikTok," Newstead wrote.

Since Trump's election, Meta has consistently reached out to him, rejecting content moderation that Republicans consider censorship and donating $1 million to Trump's inauguration. Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has also visited the White House multiple times in recent weeks.

Zuckerberg is expected to testify in court, where he will be questioned about emails in which he proposed buying Instagram to eliminate a potential competitor to Facebook, as well as expressing concerns that WhatsApp, as an encrypted messaging service, could turn into a social network.

In court documents, Meta argues that the acquisitions of Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014 were beneficial for users. The company also claims that Zuckerberg's previous statements have become irrelevant given the current fierce competition from TikTok (ByteDance), YouTube (Google), and Apple's iMessage.

The Federal Trade Commission believes that Meta holds a monopolistic position in the market for platforms that connect friends and family. It states that Meta's primary competitors in the U.S. are only Snapchat and MeWe. In contrast, services like X (Twitter), TikTok, YouTube, and Reddit, which focus on content sharing among strangers based on shared interests, are not considered direct competitors to Meta.

The trial is set for July 2025. If the FTC succeeds, in the second phase of the proceedings, it will need to prove that the forced divestiture of Meta’s assets like Instagram or WhatsApp would indeed help restore competition in the market.