Causes.com
| 9.27.22
U.S. States Ask Appeals Court to Reinstate Meta Lawsuit
Do you support the lawsuit filed against Meta?
What’s the story?
- 46 U.S. states, D.C., and Guam asked a federal court to reinstate a 2020 antitrust lawsuit against Meta Platforms, Inc., owner of Facebook, after a lower court said the plaintiffs waited too long to sue.
- The states want to challenge Meta’s acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp, alleging that Meta used its monopoly power to buy potential competitors and curtail competitive behavior. New York Solicitor General Barbara Underwood stood before a three-judge panel at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on Monday and said:
“As a result, it has stifled competition and denied consumers the improvements in service and other benefits that competition provides. The states bring this action to protect the public from continuing harm caused by this conduct.”
- Facebook successfully had the 2020 case thrown out because its purchase of the two platforms took place years prior and did not cause antitrust concern at the time. Underwood argued that the dismissal of the case by the lower court was wrong, specifically in its decision to throw out the case without discovery under the legal doctrine of “laches,” indicating that the states had waited too long to take action. Underwood countered that argument by adding:
“There was no harm to Facebook from the states filing their complaint in 2020 instead of a few years earlier.”
Facebook’s actions
- Facebook bought Instagram in 2012 for $1 billion and WhatsApp in 2014 for $19 billion.
- Meta’s team stood firm arguing that the states should have acted earlier on the purchases since they were “highly publicized” and that laches prevents the lawsuit from moving forward.
- Meta attorney Aaron Panner argued:
“The transactions took place in 2012 and 2014 and all of this conduct was, of course, quite open and publicized at the time…And yet we see a suit that’s filed at the end of 2020. The doctrine of laches exists to prevent that kind of unfair delay.”
The original lawsuit
- In Dec. 2020, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sued Facebook for illegally maintaining a social network monopoly. In cooperation with the attorney generals of the 46 states, D.C., and Guam, the FTC conducted an investigation that concluded that Facebook engaged in a systematic strategy to eliminate threats to its monopoly — including its purchase of Instagram and WhatsApp.
- The FTC’s complaint argued that Facebook dominates the world’s personal social networking services with illegal monopoly power in the market, leading to an unmatched position with staggering profits.
- The FTC stated that this course of conduct harms ordinary and expected competition, leaves consumers with few choices for personal social networking, and denies advertisers the benefit of competition.
- The FTC sought a permanent injunction that could require Facebook to remove investment in assets (including Instagram and WhatsApp), prohibit Facebook from creating conditions on software developers that discourage competition and require the company to give notice and seek approval for future mergers and acquisitions.
- Ian Conner, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition, stated:
“Personal social networking is central to the lives of millions of Americans…Our aim is to roll back Facebook’s anticompetitive conduct and restore competition so that innovating and free competition can thrive.”
Do you support the lawsuit filed against Meta?
-Jamie Epstein
(Photo credit: iStock/Kira-Yan)
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Meta is making the same arguements that AT&T made when they were forced to breakup their dominance of the telecom industry. All kinds of ominous predictions were made about losing services and losing 'our technology' - the same BS ads that Meta is running daily with people saying that the Senate is trying to take away 'our' technology.
After the AT&T breakup for anti-trust arguements we no longer had to pay lomg distance charges to neighboring exchanges to family members just 20 minutes away. There were new innovations for computer conectinvity using increasingly better modems, better voice compression to save bandwidth and much lower costs for land line phone.
Capilatlism thrives on pure competiton to make better products and services at a price point where customers will buy them. When any company becomes big enough to dominate the industry space it occupies, by buying out or suppressing competitors, capitalism dies.
Frankly, I think Facebook masquerading as Meta is a company that is already in its early death throws but it still has a lot money to stifle competitors and that is as bad for capitalism as is the purchasing of government influence to assure cash flows without having to actually earn them.
Overall, Facebook has not acted responsibly with regard to misuse of their platform by nefarious players like Cambridge Analytica and the hate groups whose formations on Facebook are facilitated by their algorithms to find new like-minded members.
Facebook does have a good international network of interconnected servers that they sell access to as a service for other companies that, for example, continuously monitor specialized equipment for failure or malfunction around the world. But that will just work just as well as a stand alone service,
The US should follow the German example which impose controls when there is a lack of competition needed for marketplace competition not just for social media but also other industries like agriculture and food, consumer products, etc where mergers and acquisitions have reduced competition resulting in rising prices & profit margins,
"[special abuse control] ...designation, which stands for five years, empowers the regulator, the Federal Cartel Office (FCO), to take faster action to respond to competition concerns linked to Meta’s operations by imposing operational conditions intended to correct antitrust abuses."
https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/04/meta-germany-fco-antitrust/
I oppose the lawsuit. Facebook/Meta is a free service. You don't have to use it, lots of people do not use it. If you don't like it, don't use it. That was not an option with other monopolies being cited as precedent, like AT&T (what, send a telegram instead??) or Standard Oil (what, switch back to a horse and buggy?).
I support more antitrust action like this. Meta has become too big and has a stranglehold over social media and messaging around the world. Not only is it too big and powerful, but it has shown an inability to regulate itself, allowing misinformation and hate speech to fester on Facebook without much check.
There comes a time when businesses get too big to be reigned in and held to standards, and Meta has reached that point.
Monopoly is never a positive situation. I am not part of Meta, Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, Instagram, or virtually any other social media platform outside of Causes (and I question,at times, why I continue to be on Causes due to the degradation of the site by the right wing). Reinstatement of the lawsuit is necessary specifically to prevent monopoly. I do understand the goal of unfettered capitalism is monopoly and a two class society (one level rich - 1%, 99% poor). That doesn't mean such a model is viable long-term nor healthy for the long-term stability of a society. Regulated capitalism that provides for a strong middle class cannot occur in a monopolistic structure such as Meta, Alphabet, and similar corporations are pursuing.
Not a yes or no question but Causes just wants liberal sound bytes.... were the filings timely yes or no?
It is time for Meta to FACE the music!
And on another note Alito on SCOTUS critics: 'questioning our integrity crosses an important line' Questioning the integrity of the Supreme Court! The Supreme Court has no integrity. It is completely political and totally out of touch with 75% of this nation. The Supreme Court needs to be completely remodeled to fit into this century. It's absolutely pathetic.
yes
I have several concerns about the way Meta/Facebook does business, or fails to do business. First, as in this lawsuit, is buying up competitors; second, tracking users, even though being asked not to track (separate lawsuit on that one); third, I am very suspicious of their policies regarding political posts—they have allowed slanted and spurious posts to go unchecked and undeleted; fourth, their "community standards" are a joke and posts that are objectionable are often not removed. They have been posting advertising so much that ads outnumber posts from friends or organizations I'm interested in; and many ads are presented deceptively as informative articles. I'm gradually trying to reduce my exposure except to keep in touch with family or friends; both to reduce the amount of tracking and to reduce the amount of power wasted by Facebook on my phone. If you have the ability to check power usage, (Battery in Settings on iPhones), you'll find that Facebook is one of the biggest power drains because of its background activity.
There shouldn't be a statute of limitations for anti-trust, conditions may change and what wasn't a "trust" before might be a "trust" later.
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc, should be treated like public utilities.
Monopolies are harmful to we the people. We have fewer options and are at their mercy when it comes to pricing.
Mete has caused some serious problems and that should be looked into.
its a monopoly. plain as day.
Meta shouldve tackle hate speech along time ago
If memory serves me, the "Statute of Limitations" was desolved many, many years ago with the lone exception of murder being unlimited. So how can this argument be allowewd for this lawsuit? Monopolies of businesses were supposedly abolished back when AT&T was forced to give up Bell Telephone so how in the hell can all these companies buy up other businesses and get away with total control over pricing not to mention production. Yep! We are unknowingly being forced into a Fascist type of government which is slowly stealing our democracy, our liberties and freedoms. We must band together and rid ourselves of the people who are attempting to obstruct our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness whether they are government, judicial, or religious zealots. Nothing we are not interested in should be placed on our "news feed" without permission from the individual. People are being "brainwashed" through social media when it is supposed to be limited to personal choice of who or what the individual wants. Personally, I either hide what I don't see, ignore, or even "block" what I don't ask for. It falls under the category of "FREE CHOICE".
The amount of data mining used to manipulate the public is beyond believable. Time to start reigning in all of the big players concerning this. Enough is enough
META has now become a monopoly just like Charter House. We have Anti-Trust laws in place to stop this from happening, but they aren't being enforced. Due to this and "Citizens United" Corporations are now running this country! This is compounded by Lobbyists giving gifts to our Representaters, and Senators, to BUY their VOTES, who we elected to represent us, NOT Corporate lobbyists! All of Congress needs to READ the CONSTITUTION, since the gifting by lobbyists as well as the Filibuster violate the Constitution! What happened to the OATHS of Office taken to honor, protect, and defend the Constitution? I find this sad!
I don't use Facebook for many reasons
Social Media must be liable for what they publish.