The United States brings Facebook into the courtroom after a long investigation into alleged anti-competitive practices implemented for years by the giant of Mark Zuckerberg. A complaint that comes from two fronts: from the Federal Trade Commission, the federal agency created with the aim of avoiding anti-competitive practices, and from a coalition of 48 US states coordinated by Attorney General Letitia James. According to the indictment, Facebook - through violations of antitrust regulations - it has become a monopoly that must be broken.
In the statement released by the FTC, we read that Facebook has eliminated the threats to its monopoly by adopting behavior that is harmful to the market and stifling competition. We talk about "a systemic strategy", including the acquisition in 2012 and 2014 of Instagram and WhatsApp. “This conduct harms competition, leaves consumers few choices for personal social networking, and deprives advertisers of the competitive advantages,” says the FTC.
Now the ball passes to the judges who - among other things - could order the sale of part of the activities (including the sale of WhatsApp and Instagram), ban Facebook from imposing anti-competitive conditions on software developers and from pursuing future mergers and acquisitions without the approval of the governing bodies.
"Personal social networking is critical to the lives of millions of Americans" said Ian Conner, director of the FTC's Bureau of Competition. “Facebook's actions to strengthen and maintain its monopoly deny consumers the benefits of competition. Our goal is to undo Facebook's anti-competitive conduct and restore competition so that innovation and free competition can flourish. "
In short, it seems that the giants of Silicon Valley are now starting to find themselves in front of a concrete threat. As we know, in fact, not only Facebook is in the sights but all the big techs. A similar investigation against Google was announced in October and legal action is underway against Amazon.
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