Good day all. Things aren’t going to well for Mark Zuckerberg and Meta. The Federal Trade Commission, (FTC), is looking at designating Meta as a monopoly and breaking them up. Basically, the FTC would force Meta to sell off Instagram and WhatsApp.
Personally, I don’t see Meta, which is the holding company for Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram as a monopoly. While I have a presence on Facebook, and I do have an account on Instagram, (I don’t post to it, just follow a few people), I don’t use WhatsApp as a secure messaging client. I used to, but stopped when Meta bought the company and blew several gaping holes in the security protocols.
However, Zuckerberg, who has had a “Come to Mar-a-laga” moment and closed down the fact checkers that Facebook used to censor people, is still looking at a forced divestiture of assets.
Here are the details from the Daily Wire:
Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly offered the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) nearly $1 billion to keep a case out of court that could break up his social media empire.
Zuckerberg called the head of the FTC, Chairman Andrew Ferguson, in March to try to settle the case out of court. Zuckerberg initially offered the agency $450 million, but later increased that offer to nearly $1 billion to avoid bringing the case to court. Ferguson rejected the offers, which were far below the $18 billion payment and consent decree that he offered Meta, according to The Wall Street Journal.
As much as I despise Mark Zuckerberg, I really don’t see how this company is a monopoly. WhatsApp has some serious competition from Signal and Threema, and they are far more secure then WhatsApp. As for Instagram? There is TikTok, Pinterest, Twitter, YouTube and Snapchat.
Meta’s head found himself in court on Monday despite those efforts. Government attorneys say that Meta has used illegal anticompetitive practices to buy up its competition, namely Instagram in 2012 for $1 billion and WhatsApp in 2014 in a nearly $22 billion deal. The FTC says that Meta has bought out competitors and now illegally dominates the “personal social-networking” market.
No, actually, they don’t. Yes, Facebook is the “Big Boy on the block,” but as I mentioned, the other apps aren’t as underwhelming as the FTC is claiming.
Meta has said that the FTC’s definition of the market is arbitrary and too narrow, and it ignores other major competitors of the tech giant. According to the FTC, Meta’s major competitors are Snapchat and an app called MeWe. Meta has said that it also competes with YouTube, TikTok, and X, among other companies not included in the FTC’s definition.
I forgot to mention MeWe. I also have an account on that platform.
During the trial, Meta has argued that the growth of TikTok has been a major barrier to Meta’s own development. Meta has also said that an outage at TikTok earlier this year resulted in a bump in Instagram traffic, suggesting that Americans use the two platforms for similar purposes.
TikTok is the one platform I stay away from. Anything posted to it will end up in the hands of the Chinese Ministry of State Security. (MSS) Worse, if you have the app on your devises, it’s going to rampage through them. This is the reason that the Trump administration is trying to force a sale. They want the platform out from under the control of the People’s Republic of China.
In public statements, Meta has complained about the Trump administration’s pursuit of it while appearing to treat TikTok, a Chinese-owned platform, more loosely by extending a pause on a congressionally approved ban on the app.
I’m not to sure that this is really on President Trump. The head of the FTC is a Biden holdover, although he is listed as a Republican. Besides, there are so many other things to hit Zuckerberg and Meta over, such as their censoring opinions that Meta’s management and employees, (Most of whom are Progressives), disagreed with.
Tying into this was Facebook’s aiding and abetting the Biden Maladministration in their blocking of anything that went against the Biden Maladministration. Accusing Meta of being a monopoly really smacks of governmental overreach. There are far better targets for the FTC to go after, such as Google and Big Pharma. I think the judge should dismiss the government’s case. We shall see what happens.
Thatisall
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~The Angry Webmaster~
