The US government has suffered a severe setback in trying to get Facebook broken up in court . A judge in Washington dismissed a corresponding lawsuit from the FTC. The FTC could not show that Facebook had a monopoly in the market for social networks, he argued in his decision. However, he left the authority open to submit an updated complaint within 30 days.
The FTC accused Facebook of unfair competition in the lawsuit filed in December and wanted to achieve a split from Instagram and WhatsApp . Facebook bought the photo platform and the chat service to protect its dominance from its rivals, is their argument. More than 40 states also filed a similar lawsuit of their own. Facebook requested the court to dismiss the lawsuits - among other things because the FTC had too vaguely outlined the market in which Facebook was active.
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As a result of the court ruling, the value of the Facebook group on the New York Stock Exchange exceeded the one trillion dollar mark for the first time.
New FTC boss is considered a critic
A central question now is how the administration of President Joe Biden intends to deal with the case - he had inherited the lawsuit from his predecessor Donald Trump. However, Lina Khan - a well-known critic of the competitive position of large tech companies - was recently appointed as the new head of the FTC.
Facebook bought Instagram for around $ 1 billion in 2012 and WhatsApp for around $ 22 billion in 2014. Both services now have well over a billion users. The US competition watchdogs approved the takeovers of Instagram and WhatsApp at the time.
There had already been calls in the past to remove Instagram and WhatsApp from Facebook. In recent years, the group has brought the infrastructure behind the platform of its online network as well as Instagram and WhatsApp closer together. That would make a split technically more difficult.
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It's a shame that the lawsuit didn't get through, but the heyday of social networks seems to be over anyway. There is hardly anything going on on Facebook and Instagram seems to be degenerating into an advertising platform. We live in a world in which it is easy to independently produce "content". The hurdles for creation are low, the hurdles for disseminating it are now very high.
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"A key question now is how the administration of President Joe Biden intends to deal with the case - he inherited the lawsuit from his predecessor Donald Trump." Biden is not going to continue Donald Trump's lawsuit. Everything should be different with Biden.
Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok & Co. must finally be properly regulated. Brexit, Twitter & Trump, Fakenews, Bubble, mental illnesses & suicides have been adequately investigated and proven, manipulating societies or entire countries, also investigated & proven. In the end, however, only the market value of the platform counts and not the damage that is caused. What is that supposed to be "properly regulated"?
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It could hardly be any more hollow. And if you like, you can also act against lies, but then please act consistently and first and foremost against all religions and at least deprive every supporter of these fake news disseminators the right to vote.
As sad as it may sound: the USA will do a devil to smash their big players like Facebook, Amazon or Google because they would lose influence globally, especially with regard to competitors from China.
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