In September 2006, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, described what made his social network special.
“Facebook is about a real connection with real friends,” he wrote in corporate.
Two decades later, this description on Wednesday is an orientation antitrust court against the social network of Mr. Zuckerberg, now called a meta, and whether it illegally suppressed the competition. In essence, the court raised the question of whether social networks were simply about connecting with friends and family, or whether it was more.
The Federal Commission, which prosecutes the case, tried to closely define social networks as a service that connects friends and family. According to this definition, the meta would really compete only with Snap, the manufacturer of Snapchat, who obscures size and user. However, Meta claimed that all social media companies are counted as rivals, especially Tiktok and YouTube, which would mean that the competition was more abundant.
“Some of the friend decreased a bit,” Mr. Zuckerberg said in the testimony of the court last month and reduced his words.
The opposite definition of social media in the case of the Federal Commercial Commission v. Meta Platform – show how many social networks have evolved for more than ten years and how slippery happened. Meta has expanded far beyond Facebook roots as a bulletin board for university students, and many newer companies have developed similar products and emulate popular functions such as the “like” button and news channels.
In the first four weeks of court proceedings, a show of social media executives from companies including Reddit, Pinterest and LinkedIn did little to help clarify the definition of social networks. They acknowledged that they all competed for the same users, but in many cases offered very different products.
Defining where the meta fits into the landscape of social media will be the first and most important decision for Judge James E. Boasberg from the US District Court for the Columbia District, which chair the court.
It will be “no walk in the park,” Judge Boasberg wrote at the end of last year.
The case examines whether META buys Instagram in 2012 for $ 1 billion and WhatsApp in 2014 for $ 19 billion illegally canceled competition. Judge Boasberg will have a wide consequences for the technology market because the industry is facing the summer bipartisan pressure to limit the strength and grip of Silicon Valley over speech, entertainment, trade and calculation.
If it is side with a government that stated that it is trying to break a meta, the decision could discourage the greedy taste of the largest technological companies to buy smaller opponents. This would shook the initial economy, where many founders rely on larger players to get their companies for huge amounts of money, allowing investors to make money.
“This is a significant case, because the world in which we are now has become much more complicated, and if FTC wins, there will probably be more aggressive anti -monopolous enforcement,” said Daniel Rubinfeld, former representative of the Prosecutor’s General at the Ministry of Justice, who worked on the government against Microsoft.
In most anti -monopolous cases, the competitive market is easier to define, legal experts said. Prices are used as a foundation to evaluate the strength and impact of the company on competition. This could include fusion or anti -competitive behavior that, for example, increases airline ticket prices or household appliances.
However, Internet companies such as META offer free services to customers and turn their case into a new legal debate.
In his introductory statements, Daniel Matheson, the main lawyer of the government, accused a meta of the “monopolist of personal social networking in the United States” with two competitors: Snap and a small Mewe.
Mr. Matheson claimed that the Meta network who knew each other was the key to the growth of society and that it attracted advertisers who were interested in users promoting goods to their close connections.
Meta fired back and said she was now primarily competing for users who were walking through short videos on YouTube and Tiktok. Her best judge, Mark Hansen, said the company entered the “crisis” regime when Tiktok became available in the United States in 2018.
On Thursday, one of Metaine’s lawyers asked Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, if the application was more like Facebook or Tiktok.
“I put Instagram between two, but much closer to Tiktoku,” he said. Instagram began as an application for connecting friends, he added, but users now turn to entertain much more.
The show of executives from other companies on social media covered little to define the market in the field.
“YouTube and Instagram are the most important competitors of Tiktoku,” says Tiktok’s internal document from 2021 presented with Meta’s Lawyers.
When he asked about rivalry, Adam Presser, Tiktok’s head of operations, he undermined the idea that applications work differently: “I don’t think of us as a social application.”
YouTube is mainly used for entertainment, and people rarely use the platform to share content or watch other users they know, said Aaron Filner, head of the company.
As for the X -Social Media website, “I guess more people think it as a place today to see what’s new and what’s going on in the world, on the other hand, thinks about it as a place to share images and what with friends and family,” Keith Coleman, Vice President.
Legal experts said it is typical that market definitions are quarreling.
In 1997, the FTC successfully sued to block the merger of Staples and Office Depot, warning against concentration in the office market. Companies claimed that they competed with other retailers like Walmart.
Next year, the government accused Microsoft to squeeze the competition by tieing its Internet browser with the popular Windows operating system. The government convinced the judge to closely define the market as personal computers running on Intel chips, except for Apple computers and manual devices.
“FTC in the case of meta is a traditional approach to defining markets closely, but the challenge is that the market feels different because it is digital and makes sense that competition is for eyeballs and attention,” said John Newman, Professor of Law at the University of Miami and former former FTC official, who worked on the case of the agency against META.
Judge Boasberg gave little hint of his thinking. Nevertheless, he noted that different applications of social media seem to have many of the same features and asks if the way they are used is “just a difference in the title”.
He noted that text messages had replaced voice calls, which he described as “older communication”. Younger users are even easier when switching platforms and technologies.
“Doesn’t these standards change all the time?” Judge Boasberg, who does not use social media, asked the expert.
