Meta antitrust trial kicks off in federal court

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Scope of the Case and Market Definition

  • Central dispute: whether Meta has monopoly power in a narrowly defined “personal social networking” market (FB, Instagram, WhatsApp, Snapchat, MeWe) vs a broader space that includes TikTok, YouTube, X, iMessage, etc.
  • Many commenters think the FTC’s market definition is cherry‑picked; if TikTok/YouTube are in, proving monopoly power becomes much harder.
  • Others argue the right lens is “substitutable, identity‑based social graphs,” where network effects make a few winners uniquely powerful.

Instagram and WhatsApp Acquisitions

  • Widespread view that Facebook bought Instagram and WhatsApp primarily to neutralize fast‑growing competitors, citing internal emails explicitly talking about “neutralizing a potential competitor” and “buying time.”
  • Counterview: buying competitors is common and legal if it passes antitrust review; at acquisition time Instagram was small, unprofitable, and widely mocked as overpriced.
  • Debate over whether Instagram’s success was inevitable vs largely due to Meta’s capital and integration.
  • Several note Facebook’s app‑level spying (Onavo, installed‑apps lists) gave early visibility into rivals’ growth.

Retroactive Antitrust and Chilling Effects on M&A

  • Strong disagreement over the FTC revisiting a merger it unanimously cleared in 2012.
    • Critics: undermines the value of prior approval, feels like retroactive rule‑changing, creates legal uncertainty and chills exits for startups.
    • Supporters: antitrust law has always allowed unwinding mergers shown later to be anticompetitive; earlier enforcement was too timid.
  • Some say a chilling effect on “buy your rising rival” deals is a feature, not a bug.

WhatsApp, Promises, and Legal Theories

  • Several see WhatsApp as the clearest case: explicit pledges not to share data with Facebook later reversed under threat of account loss.
  • Others argue those promises were voluntary, likely not contractually enforceable without clear consideration or provable monetary damages, and may be more about false advertising/consumer protection than antitrust.

Competition, Consumer Harm, and Lock‑In

  • One camp: social and messaging markets are obviously competitive (Signal, Telegram, iMessage, Snapchat, TikTok, Reddit, etc.), products are free, and showing consumer harm is hard.
  • Opposing camp: network effects, zero‑rating, and infrastructure scale (e.g., video in WhatsApp, ubiquity in Latin America) make WhatsApp and Instagram de facto utilities that are very difficult to dislodge, even if nominal alternatives exist.

Political and Governance Concerns

  • Repeated speculation that the case is being used as leverage by the current administration or future presidents to pressure Meta on content and moderation, regardless of formal legal merits.
  • Others emphasize the case’s bipartisan and multi‑administration origins and see it as a long‑overdue correction after decades of lax tech antitrust.

Power Over Information and Society

  • Some focus less on pricing/competition and more on Meta’s control of discourse: alleged suppression or amplification of political content, past roles in foreign interference and ethnic violence, and the risks of one company steering public opinion across multiple dominant platforms.