At the time this is being written, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of social media giant Meta (owner of Facebook), is appearing in a court in Washington to defend himself against allegations against the company in a lawsuit filed by the US antitrust regulator, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The trial, which is now called the blockbuster case in business history, began on Monday and is expected to last until July. Most countries have legal systems in place to ensure competition in the market and to prevent companies from taking advantage of their dominance to eliminate competitors. In Europe, this is under the European Commission having wide jurisdiction. It has a history of having prosecuted Google a few times and fined it several billion euros for actions taken to maintain its dominance and practices to stifle competition. .
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Meta has been charged with what is called antitrust violations in the United States after a six-year investigation. The gist of the accusation is that Facebook acquired social media platforms WhatsApp and Instagram to eliminate competitors. If the FTC’s arguments are upheld, then Meta Platforms, the parent company, will not be able to continue as the owner of these three platforms together. This means WhatsApp and Instagram will have to be separated and become companies with different ownership and separate entities. Then their annual advertising revenue, estimated at $ 1.4 trillion, will also be at stake. Political and economic observers are looking closely at whether such an event will happen that could cause a shock in the market. This is also crucial for Meta, especially in the case of Instagram because about half of Meta's advertising revenue reportedly comes from Instagram. And in the case of WhatsApp, which quickly captured a huge market in the domain of instant messaging, was acquired for $19 billion in 2014, just five years after its founding.
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Before Zuckerberg took the stand to defend Meta's case, the FTC produced two internal emails from Zuckerberg, which were in 2012 before acquiring Instagram. He spoke of neutralising potential rivals in the mail. In 2014, before it bought WhatsApp he said the app posed a real risk to Facebook. The FTC argues that Facebook decided to buy up the apps instead of competing with them. Meta, however, says it wanted to grow the apps and grow with them. Meta's lawyer, Mark Hansen, argued that it does not sell anything in exchange for money using its monopoly position and that most of its apps are free. He also pleaded that the evolution of the company from a personal network to a social media platform is a natural evolution of the industry and not planned by them. As the days and weeks of the trial go by, we will have to wait and see how the case progresses and the outcome, which will become more detailed and complex.
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However, the question that arises is whether Donald Trump's administration is handling this issue with the political will to confront this 'Big Tech' company, which is not only a financial monopoly but also a media monopoly. Zuckerberg, in particular, is a known Trump supporter. He was among the special guests at Trump's second inauguration and had made news for his donation of one million dollars to the inaugural event. It is also noteworthy that as per a Wall Street Journal report Zuckerberg had tried to close the case by paying $450 million at one stage and later raising it to $1 billion.
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Monopolies are always likely to cause more harm than good- although it is justified in theory that they act more responsibly. While this is happening in the commercial sector, the excessive influence of an institution like Meta is much discussed because it plays a crucial role in the field of dissemination of ideas, shaping public opinion, and awareness. At a time when the influence of print media is declining, the current era demand paying active attention to the news and views circulating through electronic media, including social media such as Meta and X.
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The social media laws of various countries regulate their content. They may also reflect the interests of governments as also the moral and ethical norms followed by the people. Disputes about these continue to this day. However, there are often trends in social media by the platform owners to remove or block content in a biased manner, just to avoid the frowns of governments. If monopoly power comes on top of this, then there will be little space for opposing voices and truths unsavoury to the establishment. To prevent this from happening, it is not enough for the subsidiaries of Meta split up and become independent, but conditions must also be created for parallel entities that are equal to Meta to grow. In that sense, the elimination of monopolies is certainly desirable.
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