U.S. Court Fails to Apply Antitrust Law in Meta Case
Salt Lake City, UT – Open Markets Institute Policy Counsel Tara Pincock released the following statement on U.S. District Judge James Boasberg’s ruling that the FTC has not demonstrated that Meta holds a monopoly in social media:
“Today’s ruling from the D.C. District Court in favor of Meta is profoundly misguided. Antitrust law exists to ensure that companies win by competing on the merits—not by buying out emerging rivals. When Meta acquired Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014, it did the opposite. Direct evidence introduced in the trial details how Meta bought these companies precisely to remove potential rivals from the market. The FTC never should have approved them. Now, as the agency works to correct that mistake, the court has effectively declared it “too late” because Meta is supposedly no longer a monopolist. That is wrong on both the facts and the law. The FTC should appeal.
“Tech giants hold extraordinary power over the digital public square. They influence what we see, what we hear, and increasingly what we believe. Meta in particular has repeatedly shaped political and electoral discourse—often in ways that undermine democratic values. It has been able to do so because it dominates the social networking market and eliminated Instagram and WhatsApp as independent competitors, leaving users with fewer real alternatives.
“Judge Boasberg erred in concluding that Facebook competes with TikTok and YouTube. I was part of the bipartisan coalition of states that brought this case alongside the FTC in December 2020, and the court’s framing misrepresents what is at stake. This case has never been about generic “time and attention.” It is about how people connect, communicate, and build communities—and about how a powerful company abused its dominance to protect itself from competition.
“If previous courts reasoned in this way, AT&T would still dominate communications in the United States, and with far fewer innovations, higher costs, and enormous control over how we receive and share information in our democracy.”
From 2019-2023, Pincock served as an Assistant Attorney General for the State of Utah.