Facebook can be sued by the US competition authority
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, had first succeeded in having the accusations of dominant position invalidated.
Meta is regularly accused, like its neighbors in Silicon Valley, of having accumulated far too much economic, political and social power.
Getty Images via AFP
The US competition authority (FTC) can sue Facebook, a judge ruled on Tuesday, bad news for the social media giant which had been trying to have the dominance charges overturned.
This Washington federal judge, James Boasberg, considered admissible the new complaint filed by the FTC last August, after his first case was dismissed by the same magistrate in June. The agency “stumbled in the starting blocks” on its first attempt, and it “will no doubt encounter obstacles in proving its charges,” noted the judge. But “the facts as they are presented this time (…) are more solid and detailed than before”.
Its decision rejects the request of Meta (the parent company of Facebook) to dismiss for good the prosecution “without valid evidence”, according to the Californian company. Facebook argued in particular that the president of the FTC, Lina Khan, is not neutral. But James Boasberg replied that she did not have to be a prosecutor.
Damaged reputation
In its complaint, the FTC argues that Mark Zuckerberg’s group “illegally bought or buried new innovators when their popularity became an existential threat”, referring to the Instagram application and WhatsApp messaging.
She also argues that “personal social networks are a unique and distinct type of online service”, and a market more than 65% controlled by Facebook, with its main platform and Instagram – therefore a monopoly.
This is one of the most threatening issues for Meta, regularly accused, like its neighbors in Silicon Valley, of having accumulated too much power, both economically, politically and socially. Her reputation deteriorated further in the fall because of the revelations of a whistleblower, Frances Haugen, a former engineer who leaked numerous internal documents.
She hammered at the American Congress and in European Parliaments that the firm with some 3.5 billion monthly users was putting “profit before the safety” of its users. “It is impossible to say whether the FTC will be able to prove its allegations at trial,” the judge insisted on Tuesday. Meta did not immediately respond to a request from AFP.
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