Seems like only the other day I was chatting about yet another big tech monopoly—because I was. But instead of Google appealing the US Department of Justice's antitrust ruling against it, this time the Federal Trade Commission is appealing a November 2025 ruling concerning Meta.
The FTC originally filed its lawsuit against the company, then called Facebook, all the way back in 2020. The original suit alleged the company had "engaged in a systematic strategy" of buying up competitors, such as Instagram and WhatsApp, in order to maintain its social media monopoly.
The case was brought before a US district judge in Washington, who ultimately ruled last year that Meta had not violated antitrust laws with these acquisitions. In his decision, Judge James Boasberg even noted that the FTC itself had reviewed and approved both Meta's 2012 acquisition of Instagram, as well as the company's 2014 purchase of WhatsApp.
Undeterred, the FTC is appealing that decision, and still highlights those same acquisitions as the motivation behind its most recent appeal.
FTC Bureau of Competition Director Daniel Guarnera issued the following statement: "Meta has maintained its dominant position and record profits for well over a decade not through legitimate competition, but by buying its most significant competitive threats. The Trump-Vance FTC will continue fighting its historic case against Meta to ensure that competition can thrive across the country to the benefit of all Americans and U.S. businesses."
This is also far from the only legal hot water Meta finds itself in. Just in terms of antitrust action, Italian authorities have also launched an investigation into Meta. Beyond that, another court case last year alleged Meta violated copyright law by torrenting terabytes of data from 'shadow libraries' in order to train its AI products. Eventually, 13 book authors spearheaded this particular legal challenge, though Meta ultimately won the case before it could go before a jury.
As for how the aforementioned, acquired social media apps are faring under Meta, Instagram has ditched fact-checkers and seen a tidal wave of gore accidentally recommended to users, while 3.5 billion WhatsApp users saw their data scraped in what could potentially be the 'largest data leak in history.'
