On Monday, the antitrust push against Facebook encountered major obstacles when the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and 48 states filed antitrust lawsuits against the tech giant.
The dismissal is a major victory for Facebook, and it works with Amazon, Apple, and Google Facing increasing scrutiny on whether it engages in monopolistic behavior Stifle its competition. For the growing bipartisan political movement in the United States, the power to control large technology companies is also a major setback. This suggests that antitrust enforcement against these companies may require legislators to re-examine the existing U.S. antitrust law, which underwent the last major reform in the early 1900s — well before the Internet era.
The FTC’s lawsuit against Facebook argued that Facebook had conducted a monopoly on its competitors, but the judge’s ruling on Monday stated that the FTC’s arguments were not clear enough.
“The U.S. Federal Trade Commission failed to present enough facts to reasonably establish all the necessary elements of its Article 2 claim-that Facebook has monopoly power in the market,” read Part of Document submitted by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The document continues to criticize the FTC’s complaint against Facebook, saying that it contains “nothing other than naked allegations”, that is, the company has a dominant market position in the “personal social network” industry.
“It’s almost like the agency [the FTC] It is hoped that the court will simply agree with the traditional view that Facebook is a monopolist,” the other part of the document pointed out.
The court also rejected a parallel complaint filed with the Federal Trade Commission by 48 state attorneys general in December. When dismissing the complaints of the states, the judge ruled that the disputes between the states over Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp were too long. These two companies were acquired in 2012 and 2014, respectively.
After the court’s ruling, Facebook’s stock immediately Rose more than 4%.
“We are very pleased that today’s decision recognizes that the government’s complaint against Facebook is flawed,” a Facebook spokesperson wrote in a statement. “We compete fairly every day to win people’s time and attention, and we will continue to provide quality products to the people and companies that use our services.”
An FTC spokesperson shared the following statement with Recode in response to the dismissed complaint:
“The Federal Trade Commission is closely reviewing opinions and evaluating the best options for the future.”
Facebook may stay in touch with the FTC for the time being, but the larger antitrust case against the company is far from over
Although the court has dismissed it, the FTC’s lawsuit against Facebook has not yet been fully concluded.
On the one hand, the court allowed the FTC to submit a more detailed revised complaint against Facebook within 30 days, and it will re-examine it.
More broadly, the Federal Trade Commission and its New Chairman, Lina KhanKnown for censorship of large technology companies, other methods can be sought to limit the power of these giants. In addition to this existing case, the FTC can directly file a new case against Facebook within its own administrative department without involving the federal court system.But as we have seen in the past, even Record settlement Little influence between FTC and Facebook About how the company conducts business.
Some powerful politicians view today’s ruling as a call to Congress to update antitrust laws so that they can apply to modern technology companies.
At the beginning of this month, Bipartisan group of parliamentarians Five antitrust bills led by Rep. David Cicillin (D-RI) and Rep. Ken Barker (R-CO) are designed to limit the economic power of major technology companies. These bills include several laws that will update antitrust laws to more specifically target technology companies.
Soon after the news that the FTC’s complaint against Facebook was dismissed, Rep. Buck said on Twitter that the court’s rejection of the FTC’s complaint was one reason why the antitrust law needed to be updated.
The development of the FTC’s case against Facebook today shows that antitrust reform is imminent. Congress needs to provide our antitrust enforcers with additional tools and resources to track down large technology companies engaged in anti-competitive behavior. https://t.co/AGvSacj8kb
-Representative Ken Buck (@RepKenBuck) June 28, 2021
“This has undoubtedly increased the demand for legislative reforms,” said Bill Kovacic, the former chairman of the Federal Trade Commission during George W. Bush’s presidency. “This will prove to support [antitrust law] Reform’ This is the result you get in court. ‘”
Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) is an outspoken critic of major technology companies in the Republican Party. Also expressed his disappointment on Twitter Take today’s result.
Therefore, although these decisions may temporarily relieve the pressure on Facebook, they are only temporary. A bigger challenge lies ahead-the court’s opinion today may inspire lawmakers to adopt new methods to enforce antitrust enforcement against large technology companies.