Headline Roundup • August 19th, 2021
FTC Files Updated Antitrust Complaint Against Facebook
Summary from the AllSides News Team
The Federal Trade Commission filed an amended antitrust complaint against Facebook on Thursday, adding new evidence and claiming that the tech giant had maintained a monopoly since 2011. The new suit came after a federal judge blocked a previous antitrust complaint against Facebook in June. FTC Chair Lina Khan, a critic of big tech companies, cast the deciding vote on the complaint despite Facebook’s request that she recuse herself. In a statement, the FTC’s acting Bureau of Competition director Holly Vedova said, “After failing to compete with new innovators, Facebook illegally bought or buried them when their popularity became an existential threat.” Facebook responded in a statement, saying, “The FTC’s claims are an effort to rewrite antitrust laws and upend settled expectations of merger review, declaring to the business community that no sale is ever final.”
Coverage was generally balanced across the spectrum. Left- and center-rated outlets featured the story more prominently than right-rated outlets on Thursday evening, as homepages across the spectrum were dominated by Afghanistan.
Featured Coverage of this Story
Graeme Jennings | AFP | Getty Images
The Federal Trade Commission filed a new antitrust complaint against Facebook on Thursday, continuing its fight in federal court after a judge threw out its initial claims.
Facebook has until Oct. 4 to respond to the FTC’s amended complaint.
FTC Chair Lina Khan notably did not recuse herself from the vote on the complaint after Facebook petitioned her to do so based on her past critical statements of the industry. In a press release, the agency said that its Office of General Counsel “carefully reviewed Facebook’s petition to recuse Chair Lina M. Khan. As the case...
AP
Facebook has held a monopoly over personal social networking for the past decade, according to a beefed-up antitrust suit by the Federal Trade Commission filed Thursday.
The FTC’s amended suit, which comes two months after a federal judge dismissed an earlier version, seeks to force Facebook to restructure or sell off assets including Instagram and WhatsApp that it says help the company squash competition.
“Facebook holds monopoly power in the provision of personal social networking in the United States and has held such power continuously since at least 2011,” the...
The Verge
The Federal Trade Commission has filed an amended antitrust complaint against Facebook, alleging that the company violated federal antitrust laws with its acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp. The new complaint is a more detailed version of a charge dismissed by the court in June for insufficient evidence.
“Facebook has today, and has maintained since 2011, a dominant share of the relevant market for US personal social networking services,” the complaint alleges, citing time spent and active-user metrics on the daily and monthly scale. “Individually and collectively, these metrics provide significant evidence of Facebook’s...
