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In September 2006, Mark Zuckerberg, the Chief Executive of Facebook, described, which made his social network special.
“Facebook is about real connections with real friends,” he wrote in one Business post.
Two decades later, that description is in the middle of A milestone antitrust -test Against the social network empire of Mr. Zuckerberg, now called Meta, and whether it oppressed the competition illegally. In essence, the process has asked whether social networks are simply about connections with friends and family, or whether it is a little more.
The Federal Trade Commission, which continues the case, has tried to define social networks somewhat as a service that connects friends and family. Under that definition, Meta would really only compete with Snap, the maker of Snapchat, who dwares it in size and user. But Meta has argued that all social media companies like rivals count, especially Tiktok and YouTube, which would mean that the competition was more abundant.
“The part of the friends has fallen quite a bit,” Mr. Zuckerberg said in testimony during the trial last monthThe trivialization of his words from 2006.
The opposite definitions of social media in the case – Federal Trade Commission v. Meta platforms – illustrate how many social networks have evolved more than a decade and how slippery it has become to determine. Meta has been expanded far beyond the roots of Facebook as a notice board for students, and dozens of newer companies have developed similar products, making popular functions emulation such as the “Like” button and news feed.
In the first four weeks of the process, a parade of social media leaders of companies such as Reddit, Pinterest and LinkedIn did little to clarify a definition of social networks. They acknowledged that they all competed for the same users, but in many cases offered very different products.
Defining where Meta fits into the landscape of social media will be the first and most important decision for Right James E. Boasberg of the American court for the District of Columbia, who presents the trial.
It will be ‘not a walk in the park’, Richt Boasberg wrote an opinion at the end of last year.
The case is investigating whether the purchases of Meta van Instagram in 2012 For $ 1 billion and WhatsApp in 2014 for $ 19 billion illegally destroyed competition. The decision of Judge Boasberg will have broad implications for the technical market, because the industry is confronted with a two -part push for many years to curb the power of Silicon Valley and GRIP on speech, entertainment, trade and computer use.
If he is sitting with the government, who said that the meta wants to separate, the decision can scare the glory appetite of the largest technology companies to buy smaller rivals. That would shake up the start-up economy, where many founders rely on larger players to acquire their companies for huge sums of money, allowing investors to pay.
“It is an important case because the world in which we find ourselves now has become much more complex, and therefore if the FTC wins, there will probably be a more aggressive antitrust enforcement,” said Daniel Rubinfeld, a former deputy assistant -processor general at the Ministry of Justice who worked to the antitute of the government.
In most antitrust cases, the competing market is easier to define, legal experts said. Prices are used as the basis for evaluating the power and effect of a company on the competition. This can include a merger or competitiveness that, for example, prices for aviation tickets or house equipment increases.
But internet companies such as Meta offer free services to consumers, which means that the business is changing a new legal debate.
In his opening declarations, Daniel Matheson, the main lawyer of the government in the case, accused Meta of ‘a monopolist of personal social network services in the United States’, with two competitors: Snap and De Kleine app Mewe.
Mr Matheson argued that the network of meta of people who knew each other was the key to the growth of the company and that it attracted advertisers who were interested in users who promote goods with their close connections.
Meta shot back and said that it now mainly competed for the attention of users who scrolling through short videos on YouTube and Tiktok. The best proceder, Mark Hansen, said that the company went into the “crisis” mode when Tiktok became available in the United States in 2018.
On Thursday one of the lawyers of Meta Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, asked if the app more on Facebook or Tiktok.
“I would have Instagram between the two places, but much closer to Tiktok,” he said. Instagram started as an app to connect friends, he added, but users now turn it much more for entertainment.
The parade of managers of other social media companies have clouded the image and have done little to define the market of industry.
“YouTube and Instagram are the most important competitors of Tiktok,” said an internal Tiktok document from 2021 presented by Meta’s lawyers.
When demanding rivalry, Adam Presser, Tiktok’s head, the idea undermines that the apps function differently: “I do not consider ourselves a social app.”
YouTube is mainly used for entertainment, and people rarely use the platform to share content or follow other users they know, said Aaron Filner, a senior director at the company.
When it comes to the social media site X: “I think more people nowadays consider it a place to see what is new and what happens in the world versus to consider it a place to share photos and what not with friends and family,” said Keith Coleman, vice -president of the company’s company.
Legal experts said it was typical of bickering over market definitions.
In 1997, the FTC successfully sued a merger of Staples and Office Depot, warning for concentration on the office facility market. The companies had argued that they competed against other retailers such as Walmart.
The following year, the Government accused Microsoft of squeezing the competition by binding its internet browser to its popular Windows operating system. The government persuaded the judge to closely define the market in the case as personal computers performed on Intel chips, excluding Apple computers and handy devices.
“The FTC in the Meta case is a traditional approach to define markets scary, but the challenge here is that the market feels different because it is digital and it is logical that the competition for eyeballs and attention is,” said John Newman, a professor of law at the University of Miami and a first FTC officer who worked on the office against Meta.
Judge Boasberg has given little indication of his thinking. Nevertheless, he has noted that the different social media apps seem to have many of the same functions, asking if the way they are used is “only a difference in degree”.
He noted that text messages had replaced voice calls, something he described as ‘older communication’. Younger users are even easier in switching platforms and technologies.
“Did those standards not always change?” Judge Boasberg, who does not use social media, asked an expert witness.
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