Mark Zuckerberg led off the antitrust trial Monday that could force him to break up Meta, facing the task of convincing a federal court that the acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp did not make his $1.4 trillion company a social media monopoly. The Meta CEO was the first person to take the stand, after the Federal Trade Commission's top lawyer said in opening statements that "consumers do not have reasonable alternatives" to Meta's platforms. The company's opening argument indicated that it will contest the FTC's definition of the "personal social networking" market, Politico reports.
Daniel Matheson argued that Meta added the two platforms so it wouldn't have to compete with upstart challengers, per CNN. Meta's lawyers countered that there's other social media competition and that government regulators approved the acquisitions at the time. For an hour, Matheson pushed Zuckerberg about whether his company's platforms are mostly meant to connect users with friends, family, and other people they know offscreen, rather than being focused on showing third-party content such as news feeds to users. It's the "personal social networking" market, involving friends and family connections, where the FTC says Meta has a monopoly, per Politico.
"It's the case that over time, the 'interest' part of that has gotten built out more than the 'friend' part," Zuckerberg testified. "(Users are) connected to a lot more groups and other kinds of things. The 'friend' part has gone down quite a bit but it's still something we care about." Zuckerberg is to return to the stand in Washington, DC, on Tuesday. (More Meta stories.)
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uBlock 
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