The United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed an antitrust complaint against Facebook, which had been initially dismissed last June, alleging that the multinational resorted to an illegal scheme to acquire successful competing companies or bury those that could threaten their dominance.
At the end of June, Judge James Boasberg of the District of Columbia Court determined that the allegations against the social network presented by the FTC were “insufficient”, so he dismissed his claim, noting that the federal agency had not alleged sufficient facts to plausibly establish that Facebook has monopoly power in the market for personal social networking services.
However, the judge gave the FTC 30 days to amend his claim and resubmit a lawsuit, a deadline that was later extended until August 19.
In the amendment to its claim, the FTC accuses the network that, lacking serious competitive threats, the company “has been able to perfect an advertising model based on surveillance and impose increasing burdens on its users.”
“Facebook lacked the business acumen and technical talent to survive the transition to mobile devices and unable to compete with new innovators, Facebook illegally bought or buried them when their popularity became an existential threat”, said Holly Vedova, Acting Director of the FTC Competition Office.
In this regard, the amendment to the complaint filed by the FTC notes that executives at Mark Zuckerberg’s company addressed this existential threat by purchasing mobile innovators, including rival Instagram in 2012 and the mobile messaging app WhatsApp in 2014, which had succeeded where Facebook had failed.
Source: dpa
