As part of a major victory for the social media giant Facebook, a US federal judge has dismissed antitrust suits filed against the company by the federal government along with 40 states. On June 28, the US District Judge James Boasberg in Washington granted Facebook’s request to dismiss lawsuits filed by the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general in December. Antitrust lawsuits were dismissed in a pair of rulings before any pretrial proceedings had begun. Additionally, according to the judge, the officials failed to ‘plausibly’ establish that the social network had created a monopoly.
Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram and the messaging platform WhatsApp could have been halted by antitrust lawsuits. According to reports, the judge in a 53-page opinion stated that it ‘failed to plead enough facts to plausibly establish Facebook’s monopolistic power over the personal social networking space’. However, he did allow the authorities to refile the case.
U.S. and state officials called for the divestment of Instagram and WhatsApp in the lawsuits, alleging the tech giant had ‘entrenched and maintained its monopoly to deny consumers the benefits of competition’. Moreover, the US huge issued a separate opinion dismissing the case by the states, saying that the attorney general waited for too long to bring the case for the acquisition of Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014. Furthermore, the judge has said the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) complaint ‘says almost nothing concrete about Facebook’s real power… It’s as if they expect the court to agree with the conventional wisdom that Facebook is a monopolist’. Also, the judge noted that the agency relied on a ‘vague’ assertion that Facebook controlled over 60% of the social networking market.
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As Boasberg points out, ‘the market in question is unusual in a number of respects, including the fact that the products are not sold for a price that can be understood by the court, much less be inferred from the underlying facts that demonstrate its legitimacy’. However, in his ruling on Monday, he said that ‘this defect may be corrected by re-filing the lawsuit, allowing the federal agency to pursue legal action again.
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