F.T.C. Is Said to Consider an Injunction Against Facebook - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/12/technology/ftc-facebook-injunction.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_191213?campaign
Facebook and other big technology companies — Google, Apple and Amazon — have been under growing scrutiny for how they are wielding their power. Facebook has attracted particular attention for its dominant position in social networking and how it bought smaller rivals such as Instagram and WhatsApp over the years, which buttressed its lead.
In July, Facebook disclosed that the F.T.C. was investigating it over antitrust concerns. The Justice Department, Congress and state attorneys general are also examining whether Facebook has acted anticompetitively.
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Leading antitrust academics and others have laid out a case to regulators for breaking up Facebook by unraveling its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp. They have argued that the company made “serial defensive acquisitions” to protect its edge in the market for social networks.
But seeking an injunction of this kind would be an uncommon step for a federal antitrust agency because officials rarely consider unwinding mergers that have already closed. A majority of F.T.C. commissioners would need to approve the move in a formal vote, said an agency official who was not authorized to speak publicly.
In March, Mr. Zuckerberg said he was trying to unify the apps so that people could engage more easily in private and encrypted communications.
“We’re building a foundation for social communication aligned with the direction people increasingly care about: messaging each other privately,” he said in an interview at the time. “I believe a privacy-focused communications platform will become even more important than today’s open platforms.”
But regulators and lawmakers have been concerned that the moves may make it more difficult to disentangle the apps in the future.
In practice, the back-end infrastructure of many Facebook properties has been shared for some time. Facebook and Instagram both use the same architecture to run their advertising businesses, for example.