Expert: These Are The 'Receipts' That The FTC Has On Meta In Its Historic Antitrust Case

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On "Forbes Newsroom," Forbes Staff Writer Emily Baker-White discussed the FTC case against Meta in which CEO Mark Zuckerberg has taken the stand this week.

Transcript

00:00Hi, everyone. I'm Maggie McGrath, senior editor at Forbes. Meta faces a historic antitrust trial

00:10from the Federal Trade Commission. And on Monday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg took the stand to defend his

00:16company. Joining us to discuss these developments is my colleague on the tech team, Emily Baker

00:22White. Emily, thank you so much for joining us. Great to be here.

00:25So this trial just began this week, but it has roots in 2020 and before. Can you lay out the

00:33context? What are the charges against Meta? And when did the FTC bring the case?

00:39Yeah, so the charges against Meta go back far because they have to do with Meta's acquisition

00:43of WhatsApp and of Instagram. And so years ago, when Meta was Facebook, and when it was a much

00:51smaller company, Mark Zuckerberg pursued a strategy of purchasing both of those companies. And this

01:01case is largely about whether he purchased those companies in order to stifle competition.

01:07Zuckerberg's intentions seem to be on trial here, which seem difficult to prove. It's always hard

01:13to know what someone has in their mind and in their heart when they do an action, right? Just in

01:18general. But does the FTC have a strong case here, in your opinion?

01:23Proving motive is hard, but it's easier when there are receipts. And what the FTC has is some emails and

01:30other communications from Zuckerberg and his top lieutenants talking about their desire to buy these

01:39companies in order to neutralize competition. And that is sort of one of the strongest pieces of

01:43evidence that the FTC has here. But the FTC also has a challenge. They have to define a market for Facebook

01:52and then prove that Facebook was operating as a monopoly in that market. And that means deciding who Facebook

01:59or Meta's competitors are and were. And that gets into a really difficult sort of slicing and dicing. You have to

02:06think, is YouTube a competitor? Is TikTok a competitor? Et cetera.

02:11Defining a market here feels tricky. And I say this in part based on my own use of these services,

02:17right? You can go on Facebook Marketplace and find goods for your apartment. You can go on WhatsApp and

02:23message your friends. You can go on Instagram and post stories. And suddenly, over the course of the day,

02:29Meta has monopolized my time. But I don't think that's what the FTC is arguing here, is it?

02:34Yeah. So one of the trickiest things here, and one of the things that's new in this case,

02:40or at least fairly new, we saw it in the Google Antitrust case too, is that the primary asset here

02:47is data. We're used to talking about antitrust for the creation of things. Do you have a monopoly

02:54in the car market? Do you have a monopoly in the book market? I can hold it in my hand. We know what

03:00the thing is. And here we're talking about monopolization of data. And that's a very

03:06different, tricky thing, just for the judge to wrap his hands around.

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