The Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) antitrust case against Meta, Facebook’s parent company, is not really about protecting consumers or competition. It is an attempt to use regulatory power to dismantle a company based on political power, not law—a form of lawfare dressed in antitrust’s clothing.
To make its case, the FTC first had to invent a market. It settled on “personal social networking services,” a made-up category that conveniently includes only Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and the struggling China-based MeWe—but excludes TikTok, YouTube, X (formerly Twitter), and even iMessage. The goal of this sleight of hand is clear: By defining the market narrowly enough, the FTC could then claim Meta holds a monopoly, even though millions of users actively switch among competing social media platforms.
This manipulation sets a dangerous precedent. If regulators can define markets this arbitrarily—based on selective product features rather than customer behavior—they can make any platform look like a monopolist. This approach allows political actors to rewrite decades of business, economic, and legal experience at will, undermining rule-of-law and customer-driven markets.
The FTC’s second move is to oppose mergers 10 years after the fact. Its case hinges on Meta’s purchases of Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014—deals that were reviewed and accepted at the time. The agency now claims these were “killer acquisitions” intended to eliminate competition. But that theory only works if you ignore the facts.
At the time of acquisition, neither Instagram nor WhatsApp was profitable, and both lacked viable business strategies. Instagram had no revenue model and a small engineering team. WhatsApp was struggling. Meta turned both into global platforms used by billions of people. That’s not anticompetitive behavior—it’s value creation through investment and integration.
If the FTC’s view prevails, successful companies will think twice before acquiring promising technologies. Entrepreneurship will be suppressed as startups will have fewer paths to scale. And consumers will lose out on the innovations that come from combining creative ideas with business expertise.
Even more troubling is how the FTC’s case evolved. Its initial complaint was thrown out in 2021 for lack of evidence. Instead of admitting its error, the agency kept revising its theory until it found a version a judge would accept. The result is a case reminiscent of Groucho Marx’s famous statement, “Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others.”
All of this marks a shift away from the consumer-based competition standard that has guided antitrust for decades. Historically, US courts have judged competition based on effects on prices, output, and quality. But Meta’s services in question are free, its usage is up, and it constantly innovates. The FTC, lacking evidence of harm, now leans on the idea that Meta shows too many ads, an argument with which consumers clearly disagree.
None of this is happening in a vacuum. The Biden administration and its Democrat allies made clear that Meta was in their crosshairs. Republicans have taken the company and its CEO to task. The FTC’s campaign against Meta looks less like an unbiased legal process and more like an effort to punish a disfavored company by reinterpreting antitrust law on a whim.
This is a risky path. There are serious criticisms leveled against the company, but they have no relationship to antitrust. Antitrust enforcement should be principled, not convenient or opportunistic. Markets should be defined based on facts, not desired legal outcomes. And building successful businesses should be encouraged, not chilled by fears of retroactive review.
The Trump administration should course-correct. It can reaffirm that antitrust is about protecting consumers, not penalizing successful companies that lose popularity. It can support innovation and risk-taking by recognizing that acquisitions often benefit users. And it can restore the idea that law should constrain the abuse of power—not serve as a tool to wield it.
If we want America’s tech sector to remain a source of global leadership, we must reject efforts to control it through regulatory fiction. The FTC’s case against Meta doesn’t protect competition—it smothers it.
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