How Facebook could escape the FTCs antitrust lawsuit

I.

In December, the Federal Trade Commission voted 3-2 to sue Facebook for illegally maintaining a monopoly in social networking. The lawsuit, which was accompanied by a separate suit joined by 49 US attorneys general, alleges that Facebook used acquisitions and software restrictions on developers to prevent competitors from succeeding.

The government’s case appeared shaky from the start, I wrote at the time. Its allegation that Facebook owns a monopoly in advertising-supported social networking felt overly narrow and blinkered; the case does not even mention the existence of TikTok. And its suggestion that Facebook should have done more to share data with third-party developers seemingly runs counter to the FTC’s own privacy enforcement...

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