{"id":2716,"date":"2022-01-27T11:48:58","date_gmt":"2022-01-27T10:48:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/2022\/01\/27\/facebook-antitrust-suit-can-move-forward-judge-says-the-new-york-times\/"},"modified":"2022-01-27T11:48:58","modified_gmt":"2022-01-27T10:48:58","slug":"facebook-antitrust-suit-can-move-forward-judge-says-the-new-york-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/2022\/01\/27\/facebook-antitrust-suit-can-move-forward-judge-says-the-new-york-times\/","title":{"rendered":"Facebook Antitrust Suit Can Move Forward, Judge Says &#8211; The New York Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"cfbc967f0983488262956e73eca9483a\" data-index=\"1\" style=\"float: none; margin:10px 0 10px 0; text-align:center;\">\n<script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-3859091246952232\" crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script>\r\n<!-- blok -->\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\" data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-3859091246952232\" data-ad-slot=\"1334354390\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script>\r\n\n<\/div>\n<p>Advertisement<br \/>The government can proceed with its claims that the company abused its monopoly power through acquisitions.<br \/><span class=\"byline-prefix\">By <\/span><span class=\"css-1baulvz last-byline\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/by\/cecilia-kang\" class=\"css-mrorfa e1jsehar0\">Cecilia Kang<\/a><\/span><br \/>A federal judge on Tuesday allowed the Federal Trade Commission\u2019s antitrust lawsuit against <a class=\"css-1g7m0tk\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2021\/10\/04\/technology\/facebook-ftc-antitrust-suit.html\" title=\"\">Facebook<\/a> to move forward, rejecting Facebook\u2019s request to dismiss the case and handing the agency a major victory in its quest to curtail the power of the biggest tech companies.<br \/>The judge, James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia, <a class=\"css-1g7m0tk\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2021\/06\/28\/technology\/facebook-ftc-lawsuit.html\" title=\"\">said last year<\/a> that the F.T.C. had not provided sufficient evidence that the company, which has since renamed itself Meta, had a monopoly in social media and abused that power by harming competition. <a class=\"css-1g7m0tk\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2021\/08\/19\/technology\/ftc-facebook-antitrust.html\" title=\"\">The agency refiled the case in August<\/a>, and on Tuesday Judge Boasberg said that it had provided adequate support.<br \/>But he also included some caveats. Judge Boasberg said the agency could proceed with its claims that the company abused its monopoly power through acquisitions, which the agency has described as a \u201cbuy-or-bury\u201d strategy. He dismissed, however, the agency\u2019s charge that Facebook violated antitrust laws by cutting off third parties from its platform.<br \/>The facts provided by the agency, he said, \u201care far more robust and detailed than before, particularly in regard to the contours of defendant\u2019s alleged monopoly.\u201d<br \/>The judge\u2019s decision is a major step forward for regulators battling the powerful armies of lobbyists and litigators employed to protect the empires built by tech giants like Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google. Their combined market value has surpassed $7 trillion.<br \/>Government officials argue that this concentration of power hurts rivals and can harm consumers. In rare bipartisan agreement, Democrats and Republicans have rallied around antitrust action. This week, the Senate announced that it would begin to vote on new antitrust laws aimed at the tech sector.<br \/>President Biden has filled federal antitrust agencies with vocal critics of the technology giants, including the F.T.C. chairwoman, Lina Khan, whom Facebook targeted in its motion to dismiss the lawsuit. The Justice Department and dozens of states have filed lawsuits against Google, accusing the company of crushing competition in search and in advertising technology.<br \/>While the judge\u2019s decision was a big victory for the agency, ultimate success with the suit is far from certain and it will be years before there is any final resolution. Facebook has assembled many top lawyers to fend off legal threats. In addition, Judge Boasberg has been tough to please. In June, he dismissed a similar antitrust lawsuit against Facebook filed by more than four dozen states for falling far too short on supporting evidence of anticompetitive action. The states, led by New York, have said they plan to appeal the judge\u2019s opinion.<br \/>\u201cAlthough the agency may well face a tall task down the road in proving its allegations, the court believes that it has now cleared the pleading bar and may proceed to discovery,\u201d Judge Boasberg said.<br \/>Holly Vedova, the director of the agency\u2019s bureau of competition, said in a statement that the \u201cF.T.C. staff presented a strong amended complaint, and we look forward to trial.\u201d<br \/>Facebook said the judge\u2019s decision was a partial victory, because he dismissed one claim, that the company had harmed competition by cutting rivals like the video service Vine from accessing data and features of the Facebook platform. That practice ended in 2018, the judge said.<br \/>\u201cToday\u2019s decision narrows the scope of the F.T.C.\u2019s case by rejecting claims about our platform policies,\u201d said Chris Sgro, a spokesman for Meta. \u201cWe\u2019re confident the evidence will reveal the fundamental weakness of the claims. Our investments in Instagram and WhatsApp transformed them into what they are today. They have been good for competition, and good for the people and businesses that choose to use our products.\u201d<br \/>The F.T.C. argues in its suit that Facebook obtained a monopoly in social networking and maintained it illegally by acquiring rivals. The lawsuit focuses on the company\u2019s acquisitions of Instagram for $1 billion in 2012 and WhatsApp for $19 billion in 2014.<br \/>In its amended complaint, the agency used data from Comscore, a publicly available data analysis firm, showing that Facebook\u2019s share of the daily social media market had exceeded 70 percent since 2016. That figure jumps to 80 percent a month for smartphone users, 86 percent for tablet users, and about 98 percent for desktop users.<br \/>The agency said the company was able to achieve and maintain its dominance by buying rivals including the photo-sharing app Instagram, and WhatsApp, a popular messaging service. Instead of innovating and growing on its own merits, the company removed competition from the market and made it harder for new entrants to emerge, the agency claimed. Those deals, which were approved by previous leaders at the F.T.C., have led to less innovation and a deterioration in privacy and security for Instagram and WhatsApp users, it added.<br \/>\u201cThe agency will need to substantiate these allegations at later stages in the litigation \u2014 likely with expert testimony or statistical analysis,\u201d the judge said. \u201cBut lack of proof at this juncture does not equate to impermissible speculation.\u201d<br \/>In its motion to dismiss the case, Facebook said Ms. Khan had an \u201cax to grind\u201d given her vocal criticism of Big Tech in past roles as an academic and congressional aide. The company argued it had created a conflict of interest. Judge Boasberg rejected the argument, saying she was not involved in the initial decision to pursue the case.<br \/>\u201cNothing the company presents suggests that her views on these matters stemmed from impermissible factors,\u201d Judge Boasberg said. \u201cIndeed, she was presumably chosen to lead the F.T.C. in no small part because of her published views.\u201d<br \/>Bill Kovacic, a former chairman of the F.T.C., said Judge Boasberg \u201csimplified the case in a useful way\u201d to focus on illegal monopolization through mergers. The agency\u2019s merger approvals, he said, were the \u201coriginal sins\u201d that led to Facebook\u2019s dominance.<br \/>But Mr. Kovacic said the suit still faced many hurdles.<br \/>\u201cThe F.T.C. case lives to see another day,\u201d he said.<br \/>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2022\/01\/11\/technology\/facebook-antitrust-ftc.html\">source<\/a><\/p>\n<!--CusAds0-->\n<div style=\"font-size: 0px; height: 0px; line-height: 0px; margin: 0; padding: 0; clear: both;\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>AdvertisementThe government can proceed with its claims that the company abused its monopoly power through acquisitions.By Cecilia KangA federal judge on Tuesday allowed the Federal Trade Commission\u2019s antitrust lawsuit against Facebook to move forward, rejecting Facebook\u2019s request to dismiss the case and handing the agency a major victory in its quest to curtail the power [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"googlesitekit_rrm_CAow1sXXCw:productID":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-classe"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2716\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}