Holland & Hart antitrust and competition attorney Paul Swanson shared insights with numerous media outlets in advance of the high-stakes antitrust trial involving the Federal Trade Commission and Meta Platforms, Inc. The closely-watched case centers on FTC allegations that Meta (formerly Facebook) exercised monopoly power in its acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp.
Swanson shares with the Associated Press, “The FTC already has the difficult task, whether it’s looking at 10 years ago or five years ago or today, of trying to define what is the market we’re talking about in a sufficiently narrow way that it can show Meta has a ton of power in that market.” Adding, “And I do think that challenge has gotten harder as the years have gone by and we see more and more potential competitors in social media spaces.”
In talking to The Hill, Swanson shares, “This is not just the first test of the current administration, but it’s also a test of something that they started at the end of the last Trump administration.” He also adds, “This is a test of whether antitrust enforcement agencies still have that kind of Old Testament justice, power to break up big companies…in the context of these much less static much more fluid dynamic markets.”
Swanson told Yahoo Finance, Judge Boasberg is clearly open to hearing the FTC’s theory, yet also skeptical of it, saying, “The FTC has persuaded the judge that there are questions of fact here. And that's an achievement in itself.” He added the FTC may find it difficult to the judge that other social platforms like LinkedIn don’t belong in the market, saying “It seems like already there's some concern from the court that the market we're talking about is too narrowly drawn. The judge has not signaled that he’s on board with their narrative.”