WASHINGTON, DC – In a sweeping opinion issued today in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Judge James E. Boasberg eviscerated the FTC’s half-decade long ploy to break off Instagram and WhatsApp from Meta.
The case was first launched during the Biden Administration, when FTC Chair Lina Khan accused Meta of illegally dominating the market category of “personal social network,” despite the rapid rise of competitors in TikTok, YouTube, and Snapchat.
YAËL OSSOWSKI, Deputy Director at the Consumer Choice Center, responded to the judge’s final ruling:
“The failure of the FTC to forcibly spin off Instagram and WhatsApp is a clear victory for American social media users who no longer want government meddling in how they socialize online.
“In arguing its case, the FTC invented a new market category for the sole purpose of rendering Meta and its various apps to specific scrutiny. It was a shell game aimed at obfuscating the realities of the vibrant and competitive social media environment that faces constant disruption and competition,” said Ossowski.
The FTC attempted to creatively superimpose its definition of “personal social media networking” on WhatsApp and Instagram while claiming that YouTube, TikTok, and even Snapchat are not close to being competitors in the same category.
“While AI disrupts the search, retail, and social media markets, dethroning the legacy players, our federal agencies and justice system must abandon litigating old battles to pick winners and losers and instead revert back to the consumer welfare model that guided our antitrust laws for nearly a century,” concluded Ossowski.
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The Consumer Choice Center is an independent, nonpartisan consumer advocacy group championing the benefits of freedom of choice, innovation, and abundance in everyday life for consumers in over 100 countries. We closely monitor regulatory trends in Washington, Brussels, Ottawa, Brasilia, London, and Geneva.
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