The US agency goes to court. Facebook is accused of illegal activities

This comes in response to a June 2020 Washington court ruling that dismissed the FTC’s initial December 2020 complaint due to insufficient evidence, but gave the FTC an opportunity to complete it.

In the supplementary lawsuit relating, inter alia, to Facebook’s takeover of competitors Instagram and WhatsApp, The Federal Trade Commission accused Mark Zuckerberg of “unlawfully acquiring innovative competitors” to secure market dominance when its mobile application efforts failed.

After failing to compete with the new creators, Facebook either bought them illegally or buried them when their popularity became an existential threat.

– Confirmed in a statement to the Director of the FTC Competition Bureau.

“This anti-competitive behavior is as if Facebook bribed growing competitors not to compete with it,” she added.

According to the agency, the result has been stifling innovation, deteriorating product quality, including lower levels of data protection and privacy, and the emergence of “more intrusive advertising.”

Attached to the new complaint are statistics indicating Facebook’s monopoly on the personal social media market, as well as evidence of its ability to control prices and exclude competitors from the market.

In response to the FTC’s announcement, Facebook declared the lawsuit unfounded It does not prove that the portal has a monopolistic position.

Source: niezalezna.pl, pap