The FTC Still Has No Valid Factual Basis for Claiming That Facebook Maintained Monopoly Power Through Unlawful Exclusionary Conduct And for good reason: Facebook has never charged users any price or restricted output - not before it allegedly became a monopolist and never since. The agency effectively acknowledged before that it could not make that case. But the FTC again fails to allege facts sufficient to support a rare case of such direct evidence - that is, facts plausibly establishing that Facebook actually limited output to profitably raise prices above the competitive level.
The FTC recycles the claim that direct evidence proves Facebook’s power. And, again accepting the FTC’s factual allegations as true, the FTC alleges nothing that would prevent firms with established networks - the agency names several, including YouTube (Google), iMessage (Apple), Twitter, and TikTok (ByteDance) - from becoming PSNS rivals. Instead, the FTC’s factual allegations taken as true establish the opposite: entry was not only possible, but it in fact occurred, including by startups like Instagram and Snapchat. The FTC also still has not alleged any facts plausibly establishing that Facebook’s market position was protected by “barriers to entry” that prevented competition. The absence of any data, from any source, for a “PSNS” market makes clear that the proposed market reflects the FTC’s litigation imperatives - not commercial realities. Admitting this mismatch, the agency asks the Court to assume “arguendo” that data from a different market can establish share in the alleged market, without any facts to support that assumption. To support its new, supercharged market share numbers, the FTC relies on commercial data regarding usage of three cherry-picked apps: Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat - even though the data does not even purport to measure PSNS usage. There still is no plausible factual basis for the necessary claim that Facebook has and had a dominant share of the alleged personal social networking services (PSNS) market. The FTC Still Has No Valid Factual Basis for Claiming Monopoly Power Below we provide a brief overview of the arguments in our motion. Therefore, today we filed a second motion to dismiss the antitrust lawsuit brought by the FTC. In turning antitrust law on its head, the Commission sends the message that no deal is ever truly final and that successful American businesses can be punished for innovating and improving products that give people greater value and choice. 
We continuously innovate and improve our products and services to earn people’s time and attention because we have to in order to compete with rivals like TikTok which recently announced it reached 1 billion monthly active users.Īfter a year and a half of investigation, the FTC’s second attempt shows again this is an attack on procompetitive acquisitions the FTC itself cleared more than a decade ago. The FTC cannot credibly claim Facebook has monopoly power because no such power exists. The FTC’s fictional market ignores the competitive reality: Facebook competes vigorously with TikTok, iMessage, Twitter, Snapchat, LinkedIn, YouTube, and countless others to help people share, connect, communicate or simply be entertained. The Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) amended complaint fails to fix the deficiencies of its first attempt, and should suffer the same fate.
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