A mammoth antitrust case is mounting as the Federal Trade Commission prepares to bring Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) to court over anticompetitive practices and monopolizing social media. The FTC is joined by an alliance of 46 states, Washington D.C., and Guam, all seeking to limit Facebook's power, up to and including breaking it up.
The consensus among state and federal authorities is that Facebook's acquisitions of companies such as Instagram and WhatsApp is anticompetitive behavior, giving the company an increasingly disproportionate market share of the social media realm. A similar consensus has also been reached on Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL), which has been hit with a lawsuit by the Department of Justice over antitrust concerns that the firm has too much control over search engine products.
The pressure on tech companies, whose acquisitions have ramped up throughout the last decade, has been rapidly increasing as regulators grow increasingly concerned over their respective market shares. To put further pressure on tech giants, current antitrust concerns are shared across both parties, with investigations and antitrust efforts becoming a joint effort between Democrats and Republicans despite political tensions over the results of the 2020 election. Antitrust efforts that began under President Donald Trump are expected to continue under President-Elect Joe Biden.
The new litigation being lobbied against Facebook raises concerns over Facebook's aggression in pursuing acquisitions, with litigants on both sides of the aisle pointing to emails sent between Facebook executives that detailed concerns over the competition posed by Instagram and other companies. It has been alleged that Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has used Facebook's considerable influence to coerce other companies into going along with acquisitions, with Instagram's acquisition being one such instance.
Given the scale of the litigation and precedent set by previous cases, the case will likely take several years before there is even a hint of resolution. As for whether or not the FTC and the alliance of states behind it will succeed, nobody seems to know right now. Even should the federal government lose its case in court, there appears to be no "victory" in sight for tech companies; a new precedent, one of stricter antitrust enforcement, has been set by the federal government.
Investors of Facebook were understandably balking at the prospect of a years-long suit and the new precedent of stricter enforcement, which led to a 3.18% drop in Facebook's share price on Wednesday, dropping to $277.92 from $287.04. Facebook lost an additional 0.29% on Thursday.