After a legal battle spanning five years, Meta has prevailed in a lawsuit brought by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regarding its purchases of Instagram and WhatsApp.
On Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg issued an opinion stating that the FTC failed to demonstrate Meta breached antitrust regulations when it acquired Instagram for $1 billion in 2012 and WhatsApp for $19 billion in 2014.
The FTC did present evidence indicating that Meta — then operating as Facebook — was wary of Instagram’s rapid expansion and the threat it posed as a competitor.
“One perspective is that what we’re actually purchasing is time,” Mark Zuckerberg stated in a February 2012 internal Facebook email revealed during the proceedings. “Even if new rivals emerge, acquiring Instagram, Path, Foursquare, and others now provides us with a year or more to absorb their features before anyone else can reach their scale.”
However, Judge Boasberg’s decision focused not on whether Meta was a monopoly at the time of the acquisitions, but on whether it currently holds a monopoly. He referenced platforms like TikTok as proof that Meta faces competition.
“The environment that existed five years ago, when the FTC initiated this antitrust action, has shifted significantly,” Boasberg noted in his memorandum. “Where it once seemed logical to separate apps into distinct categories of social networking and social media, that division has since dissolved.”


