After five years, Meta has emerged victorious from a U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) lawsuit over its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp.
In an opinion released Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg wrote that the FTC did not prove that Meta was violating antitrust law when it bought Instagram for $1 billion in 2012, and WhatsApp for $19 billion in 2014.
The FTC did manage to surface evidence showing that Meta — then called Facebook — was concerned about Instagram’s fast growth and the competition it could pose.
I really wish the judges were more knowledgeable about the things they rule on and had the business acumen to better evaluate on issues. I also wish they were more objective because everyone’s political affiliations may affect their views (not that I am saying that’s what happened here but it’s also not impossible).
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There is also the argument that they do know what they’re ruling on and are corrupted by dark money 
The information gap only goes so far. Some days, I wish all that was preventing people from making good decisions would be the information gap, but sometimes that Big Tech money is tempting right!
I am curious whether Meta will use this as an excuse to further integrate WhatsApp, Instagram DMs, and Facebook Messenger. There has been plans to make WhatsApp interoperable with third party messengers (like Signal?) because of the Digital Markets Act, but I’m sure that this ruling would make them double down on integrating the Meta ecosystem before moving on to other apps.