The United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has announced that it will sue Facebook for “Illegally maintain a monopoly on social networks after several years of anti-competitive behavior”. A complaint that joins the 48 independent states led by New York and which aims, among other things, to cancel purchases of Instagram and WhatsApp.
A monopoly maintained with illegal practices that it is time to undo
The FTC announces the lawsuit and the executives and defines it in very harsh terms. According to the agency, Facebook is using its power to eliminate threats to its monopoly. The trial also focuses on how these actions have affected us as users.
“Social media is essential to the lives of millions of Americans,” said Ian Conner, director of the FTC’s competition bureau. “Facebook’s actions to consolidate and maintain its monopoly deprive consumers of the benefits of competition. Our goal is to reverse Facebook’s anti-competitive behavior and restore competition so that innovation and free competition can flourish. ”
The truth is, to our knowledge, we regularly see how Facebook, whether on the social network that bears its name or on Instagram, regularly copies the functions of other companies. According to the FTC, this is only the tip of the iceberg and pays close attention to the acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp, companies that were once in competition and were neutralized by a purchase.
Recall that at the time, the case had a considerable impact, since Facebook had assured that they could not merge WhatsApp and Facebook, which greatly worried European regulators. Over the years, functions such as sharing the WhatsApp phone number with Facebook and other maneuvers, the European Union has seen, one by one, all of its fears come true. Given this and other facts, the FTC wants Facebook to be forced to get rid of Instagram and WhatsApp.
The FTC is seeking a permanent injunction in federal court that could, among other things: require the divestment of assets, including Instagram and WhatsApp; prohibit Facebook from imposing anti-competitive terms on software developers; and require Facebook to seek advance notice and approval of future mergers and acquisitions.
The FTC is also focusing on how, bit by bit, Facebook shut down third-party access to its data, which did not prevent the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The lawsuit highlights how the social network has periodically withdrawn access to APIs and refers in particular to the one used by Vine.
The complaint alleges that Facebook enforced these policies by cutting API access to mitigate competitive threats perceived by rival social media services, mobile messaging apps and other apps with social capabilities. For example, in 2013, Twitter launched the Vine app, which allowed users to film and share short video clips. In response, according to the complaint, Facebook shut down the API that would have allowed Vine to access his friends through Facebook.
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Just remember that the founders of WhatsApp and Instagram left Facebook, leaving the costs of acquisitions. Most of these marches have had occasional controversy, with the creator of WhatsApp himself, for example, openly supporting the #DeleteFacebook cause.
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