FTC chair weighs in on Meta antitrust trial

Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chairman Andrew Ferguson weighed in on the agency’s antitrust case against social media giant Meta Platforms in a Monday appearance on "Mornings with Maria." 

The FTC and Meta headed to court Monday morning as the trial arising out of the agency alleging the tech company "has engaged in anticompetitive acquisitions to protect its dominant position" in personal social networking officially got underway. 

The agency’s lawsuit takes particular issue with Meta’s purchases of Instagram and Whatsapp and calls for the tech company to divest or reconfigure its businesses to "restore the competition." Those massive deals occurred in 2012 and 2014, respectively.

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"Mornings with Maria" host Maria Bartiromo reported a Meta spokesperson said over the weekend that "more than 10 years after the FTC reviewed and cleared our acquisitions, the Commission’s action in this case sends the message that no deal is ever truly final."

Asked about the Meta trial, Ferguson told Bartiromo that President Donald Trump "began this suit in 2020 and we’re seeing it through today." 

"On the finality of transactions, you know, the FTC doesn’t clear transactions, it tries to make a prediction about whether a transaction is going to be anti-competitive," he said. 

"But here, we have actual evidence that the transactions turned out to be anti-competitive and have given Facebook and Meta a tremendous amount of power, power we all saw on full display in 2020," Ferguson claimed during his "Mornings with Maria" appearance. "And so that’s what this case is about, is about addressing the power of Meta and making sure that the situation we had in 2020 can never arise again." 

Ferguson said the FTC "certainly" believes Meta is a "monopoly." 

"We think that the evidence that we’re going to put on at trial is going to show that it’s a monopoly," he said. "And look, we all saw full on in 2020 how much power these social media platforms have over every aspect of our daily life, of our politics, our elections, our social lives, our economic lives, and that’s what this case is about, is about addressing that sort of power and making sure that 2020 can never happen again." 

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Meta, which is helmed by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, has fervently pushed back against the FTC’s claims about a monopoly and called the agency’s case "weak." 

In a press release put out over the weekend, the tech company argued that it "faces strong competition in a rapidly shifting tech landscape that includes American and foreign competitors" and that the competition "has only grown" since the FTC lodged its complaint. 

Meta claimed the FTC has "gerrymandered a fictitious market in which Facebook and Instagram compete only with Snapchat and an app called MeWe." It said its market share was below 30% when TikTok and YouTube are taken into account and it also competes with other social media platforms.

"It’s absurd that the FTC is trying to break up a great American company at the same time the Administration is trying to save Chinese-owned TikTok," Meta said. "And, it makes no sense for regulators to try and weaken U.S. companies right at the moment we most need them to invest in winning the competition with China for leadership in AI." 

During his appearance on "Mornings with Maria," Ferguson also told Bartiromo that he was taking a "different" approach with the FTC when it comes to mergers and acquisitions and described himself as an "anti-trust enforcer." 

"I think it’s really important to protect all Americans in every aspect of their daily lives by making sure that we don’t have monopolies and we don’t have fraud," he said. "But, you know, mergers and acquisitions are an important part of how the economy grows, it’s an important part of how we have innovation and vibrancy in our economy."

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Ferguson said he sees the FTC’s role to look at mergers and "if we think they’re anti-competitive, go to court" and to "quickly get out of the way" if the agency doesn’t think they are.

Trump picked Ferguson to become the FTC’s chairman on the first day of his second presidential term.