The FTC Is Suing Meta. Will Trump Bail the Company Out?

Sign up for The Media Today, CJR’s daily newsletter.

Despite his best efforts to avoid it, Mark Zuckerberg returned to the witness stand this week. His company, Meta, is being sued by the Federal Trade Commission for allegedly “illegally maintaining its personal social networking monopoly through a years-long course of anticompetitive conduct,” and a trial that has been five years in the making just got underway. The FTC initially brought the suit in the final weeks of Trump’s first administration, arguing that Facebook (as the company was then still called) had illegally stifled competition by acquiring Instagram and WhatsApp, in 2012 and 2014, respectively, and by placing restrictions on third-party developers. In 2021, US District Court Judge James Boasberg dismissed the suit as “legally insufficient,” but the FTC amended it to present a more detailed case that accused Meta of resorting to “an illegal buy-or-bury scheme to maintain its dominance.” Boasberg allowed the complaint to proceed and largely denied Meta’s subsequent filing for a summary judgment. He will preside over the trial as the sole decider in the case. (Interestingly, Boasberg is concurrently clashing with the Trump administration over its apparent defiance of his order to immediately halt deportations under the Alien Enemies Act; yesterday, he said he had “probable cause” to believe the administration has bucked the order, and threatened to open a contempt investigation.)

Back to the Meta case, in which there’s also a lot on the line. If the FTC wins, Meta may have to unwind its acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp, which could have serious financial consequences—Instagram is expected to account for more than half of Meta’s total US ad revenue in 2025—and deter big companies from acquiring startups in the future. It is also a test of whether Zuckerberg’s recent efforts to court the Trump administration are paying off; last summer, Trump threatened him with “life in prison,” but since Trump won reelection, Zuckerberg has made multiple efforts to improve their relationship, including by donating one million dollars to Trump’s inaugural fund and making multiple visits to Mar-a-Lago and the White House in recent months. (In January, Zuckerberg also relaxed Facebook’s content moderation policies and diversity initiatives, which had been criticized by Republicans, and went on Joe Rogan’s podcast to criticize the Biden administration.) Shortly after Zuckerberg appeared with other tech oligarchs in the front row at Trump’s inauguration—many of whose companies are also the subject of FTC court orders or investigations, as Alvaro Bedoya, an FTC commissioner fired by Trump, has pointed out—Meta paid twenty-five million dollars to settle a lawsuit that Trump had brought against the company over its decision to suspend his accounts following the insurrection at the Capitol (most of which would go toward a fund for a future presidential library). Senator Elizabeth Warren posted on X that the settlement “looks like a bribe and a signal to every company that corruption is the name of the game.”

Since the start of his second administration, Trump has moved to assert greater control over independent agencies. The FTC currently consists of three people: the chair, Andrew Ferguson—an outspoken Big Tech critic who was appointed by Trump in January—and two other Republicans. (Trump fired Bedoya and the other Democratic commissioner last month, and they are now suing him for illegal overreach of executive power.) Ferguson has repeatedly said that he would “obey lawful orders” if asked by Trump to drop the antitrust suit. Rohit Chopra, a former Democratic commissioner, told Wired this week that it is critical that the trial move forward and the evidence be allowed to see the light of day. “The allegations in the complaint relate to specific conduct, and we had a reason to believe that there is a violation of law,” he said. “I hope it does not result in some cheap settlement that does nothing to fix the issues that we alleged.”

This week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Zuckerberg recently offered the FTC four hundred and fifty million dollars to settle the lawsuit. This, however, was a far cry from the thirty billion dollars that the commission has demanded, and a fraction of the value of the two apps at the heart of the case. After Ferguson found the offer not to be credible and said he wasn’t ready to settle for less than eighteen billion dollars and a consent decree, Meta increased its offer to close to a billion dollars and ramped up lobbying efforts. Though Trump at times appeared open to striking a deal with the company, he also faced pressure from Ferguson and other senior antitrust officials who urged him to let the case go to trial. 

To win the case, the FTC will need to convince the court that Meta has maintained an illegal monopoly, which will require demonstrating both “monopoly power” and “the willful acquisition or maintenance of that power as distinguished from growth or development as a consequence of a superior product, business acumen, or historic accident.” In its lawsuit, the FTC argues that the company has a long-standing monopoly in the US on providing “personal social networking services,” which it describes as networks “built on a social graph that maps the connections between users and their friends, family, and other personal connections,” and which have features that allow users to interact in “shared social spaces” and look each other up. This definition rules out companies like LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, and TikTok, as well as newer players that have joined the scene since the suit was filed, but does include Snapchat and the privacy-oriented platform MeWe. Between 2012 and 2020, Facebook commanded over 80 percent of users’ time per year in this market, according to Wired. Meta’s lawyers argue that the commission is arbitrarily defining the market, describing the government’s definition as “gerrymandering.” They also point out that the FTC voted unanimously to clear the deals more than a decade ago. According to Politico, Meta’s opening arguments this week suggest that the company “will focus overwhelmingly on combating the FTC’s definition of the ‘personal social networking’ market.”

The FTC must also prove that Meta’s acquisitions harmed competition in this market; it alleges that after buying Instagram and WhatsApp, the company faced less competition, allowing it to get away with reducing users’ data privacy and offering advertisers buggier and more expensive services. Meta contends that the FTC’s claims about consumer harm are “speculative” and argues that the platforms would not be as successful as they are today without its stewardship. The company’s attorneys wrote last week that “the FTC must prove that consumers would have had more (or better) options sooner without the acquisitions.” This may be a strong argument. Andrew Gavil, a legal scholar at Howard University, told Wired that the FTC could be considered an underdog in this case, as the harms to consumers and advertisers from the acquisitions “are fuzzier than would be ideal for an antitrust case” (as Wired put it). Boasberg, the judge, has expressed skepticism of some of the FTC’s arguments and written that some of its positions “at times strain this country’s creaking antitrust precedents to their limits.”

Yesterday, Zuckerberg wrapped up his testimony. He emphasized that he bought Instagram and WhatsApp not to take out competitors, but because he saw value in the companies. The initial trial is projected to last up to eight weeks, until the beginning of July. In the event that Meta loses, Boasberg would hear a separate trial to decide on potential remedies, likely early next year; appeals of any rulings could take years. Boasberg may be influenced by how Amit Mehta, a different judge, proceeds in a separate antitrust case Google lost last year against the US Department of Justice. (A penalties trial for that case is set to begin next month and could result in Google being stripped of some of its services, such as the Chrome browser.) A breakup of Meta would be the largest since telephone monopoly AT&T was unwound forty years ago. Even if Boasberg does side with the FTC, however, Trump could still bail Meta out. Lina Khan, the Biden-era chair of the FTC, told CNN’s Jake Tapper this week that the prospect of Trump intervening on Zuckerberg’s behalf “remains a constant worry that we all need to stay very vigilant about.”

Other notable stories:

• Last month, the office of Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, outlined a plan to crack down on leaks shortly after the New York Times reported that Elon Musk was set to receive a briefing on top-secret war plans (and shortly before Hegseth himself accidentally leaked top-secret war plans to The Atlantic). This week, three top officials at the Pentagon were placed on administrative leave—and in at least two cases escorted out of the building by security—following an investigation into leaks related to Musk, Ukraine, the Red Sea, and the Panama Canal, according to Politico. Politico also reports that John Ullyot—who, as the Pentagon’s acting top spokesperson during the first weeks of the administration, took dedicated workspaces in the building away from various mainstream outlets—is leaving the department after being sidelined.

• A team of reporters from the Times crunched the numbers to show how the White House press briefing has changed since Trump returned to office. Outlets with “preferred seating”—including CNN, Fox, ABC, the New York Post, CBS, and NBC—have been called on most often by Karoline Leavitt, the press secretary, but “more time is being given to those sitting in the back rows or standing along the perimeter,” some of whom “have asked questions more favorable to the administration or have echoed right-wing talking points.” Right-wing media figures have also often (though not always) occupied the “new media” seat that Leavitt instituted, and which she always calls on first. Overall, longtime White House reporters say their traditional independence has been eroded.

• For CJR, Joel Simon reflects on the rays of hope that can currently be seen in the local news landscape in the US. “There’s a whole new system of local media emerging across the country, and if you divert your eyes from the terrifying threats to American democracy you can just see it coming into focus,” he writes. “It’s important to recognize the potential especially at a time when journalists and media experts are obsessing about the lack of sustainable business models, the expanding news deserts, the media’s declining influence, and the threat from AI. The concerns are understandable. But journalists and the public we serve also need to believe there is a future worth fighting for.”

• Yesterday, hundreds of journalists in France joined protests in Paris and Marseille to express solidarity with media workers who have been killed in Gaza since October 7. In Paris, “prominent members of the French press lay down on the steps of the Opéra Bastille in a symbolic ‘die-in’ as the names of the reporters killed in Gaza were read out,” France 24 reports. “Many wore red-stained press signs and fake flak jackets as they carried photographs of journalists killed in Gaza while trying to report on the war,” and displayed photos of those killed with the caption “Gaza of faces, not just numbers.” 

• And 4chan, the messaging board that has been called the “cesspool of the internet,” appears to be down following a major hack that seems to have exposed its code and moderators. In his newsletter, Garbage Day, Ryan Broderick wrote that 4chan is “likely, finally, dead,” and pondered the fact that its demise coincided with the news that OpenAI is building a social network. The world will “almost certainly” be better without 4chan, he writes. “But it’s also possible we look back one day and wish the internet still felt as messy and, more importantly, human as it did when 4chan ruled the world.”

Has America ever needed a media defender more than now? Help us by joining CJR today.