Meta will face antitrust trial over Instagram, WhatsApp acquisitions


Facebook owner Meta Platforms must face trial in a U.S. Federal Trade Commission lawsuit seeking its break-up over claims that it bought Instagram and WhatsApp to crush emerging competition in social media, a judge in Washington ruled on Wednesday.

Judge James Boasberg largely denied Meta’s motion to end the case filed against Facebook in 2020, during the Trump administration, alleging that the company acted illegally to maintain its social network monopoly. Meta, then known as Facebook, overpaid for Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014 to eliminate nascent threats instead of competing on its own in the mobile ecosystem, the FTC claims.

Read more…
Source: MSN News


Sign up for our Newsletter


Related:

  • US Department of Homeland Security reportedly sent hundreds of subpoenas seeking to unmask anti-ICE accounts

    February 14, 2026

    The Department of Homeland Security has been increasing pressure on tech companies to identify the owners of social media accounts that criticize Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), according to The New York Times. This echoes other recent reporting, with Bloomberg pointing to five cases in which Homeland Security sought to identify the owners of anonymous Instagram ...

  • Photo-Sharing Platform Flickr Issues Data Breach Warning

    February 6, 2026

    It’s not been the greatest start to February as far as data breaches are concerned. Substack has confirmed it has been hacked, and now Flickr has issued a warning to users concerning a data breach vulnerability that might have leaked their personal data. Although it’s unknown how many users may have been affected at this stage, ...

  • Substack confirms data breach affects users’ email addresses and phone numbers

    February 5, 2026

    Newsletter platform Substack has confirmed a data breach in an email to users. The company said that in October, an “unauthorized third party” accessed user data, including email addresses, phone numbers, and other unspecified “internal metadata.” Substack specified that more sensitive data, such as credit card numbers, passwords, and other financial information, was unaffected. In an ...

  • Paris prosecutor’s cybercrime unit searches X office

    February 3, 2026

    French police raided the offices of Elon Musk’s social media network X on Tuesday and prosecutors ordered the tech billionaire to face questions in April in a widening investigation, amid growing scrutiny of the platform by authorities across Europe. France’s raid and the summoning of Musk — which could further increase tensions between Europe and the ...

  • A new LinkedIn phishing scam is targeting executives online

    January 21, 2026

    Business executives and IT admins are being targeted by a highly sophisticated phishing attack which doesn’t happen in the email inbox but rather – on LinkedIn. Security researchers ReliaQuest said they saw a new attack that combines legitimate Python pentesting projects, DLL sideloading, and fake job ads, to infect “high-value targets” with remote access trojans ...

  • Phishing scammers are posting fake “account restricted” comments on LinkedIn

    January 14, 2026

    Recently, fake LinkedIn profiles have started posting comment replies claiming that a user has “engaged in activities that are not in compliance” with LinkedIn’s policies and that their account has been “temporarily restricted” until they submit an appeal through a specified link in the comment. The accounts posting the comments all try to look like official ...