Saudi Press

Saudi Arabia and the world
Thursday, Oct 02, 2025

The US Government Says Facebook Needs To Sell Instagram And WhatsApp

The US Government Says Facebook Needs To Sell Instagram And WhatsApp

Forty-eight attorneys general and the Federal Trade Commission filed suit against the company Wednesday.

Facebook has used illegal monopoly power and an “unlawful scheme” to stifle competition, degrade personal privacy, and crush rivals, according to antitrust lawsuits filed Wednesday by the Federal Trade Commission and attorneys general from 46 states and two territories.

“For nearly a decade, Facebook has used its dominance and monopoly power to crush smaller rivals and snuff out competition, all at the expense of everyday users,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said at a press conference announcing the action. “By using its vast troves of data and money, Facebook has squashed or hindered what the company perceived as potential threats.”

James said the company’s “unlawful scheme” has reduced choices for consumers and “degraded privacy protections for millions of Americans.”

The long-anticipated suits allege that the social networking behemoth has abused its market dominance in order to acquire or kill competitors, abuse the privacy of Americans, and punish rivals who refused to be bought out. The suits cite Facebook’s 2012 acquisition of Instagram and its 2014 purchase of WhatsApp as key examples of its alleged anticompetitive behavior.

The suits ask the courts to permanently stop Facebook from continuing its allegedly illegal behavior, to curtail major new acquisitions by the social network, and to potentially force it to divest its major assets, including Instagram and WhatsApp. The state attorneys general asked the courts to require Facebook to seek their approval for acquisitions valued at or above $10 million.

Facebook’s actions to entrench and maintain its monopoly deny consumers the benefits of competition,” said Ian Conner, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition, in a statement. “Our aim is to roll back Facebook’s anticompetitive conduct and restore competition so that innovation and free competition can thrive.”

In a statement, Jennifer Newstead, Facebook's vice president and general counsel, called the lawsuits' allegations "revisionist history."

"Instagram and WhatsApp became the incredible products they are today because Facebook invested billions of dollars, and years of innovation and expertise, to develop new features and better experiences for the millions who enjoy those products," she said. "The most important fact in this case, which the Commission does not mention in its 53-page complaint, is that it cleared these acquisitions years ago. The government now wants a do-over, sending a chilling warning to American business that no sale is ever final."

Facebook previously defended its actions and acquisitions after the House Antitrust Subcommittee released a report in October that said it and other tech giants have abused their monopoly power.

During public hearings, the subcommittee released emails from Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg in which he told a company executive that acquiring Instagram would neutralize a competitor.

“These businesses are nascent but the networks are established, the brands are already meaningful, and if they grow to a large scale they could be very disruptive to us,” Zuckerberg wrote to David Ebersman, then the company's CFO, in early 2012.

Forty-five minutes after sending his email, Zuckerberg attempted to walk back his comments. “I didn’t mean to imply that we’d be buying them to prevent them from competing with us in any way,” he wrote in a follow-up message.

On Wednesday, news of the antitrust lawsuits filtered to employees via articles posted by their colleagues to the company's internal message board. It took several hours after the news broke for Newstead and Zuckerberg to make internal announcements, with Facebook's CEO saying he was "limited in discussing specifics of these cases."

"Overall, we disagree with the government's allegations and we plan to fight this in court," Zuckerberg wrote. He noted that Facebook's competitors including Google, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok, and others have apps with "hundreds of millions or billions of users."

"Our acquisitions have been good for competition, good for advertisers, and good for people," Newstead wrote in her post to employees.

Inside Facebook, discussion was muted as only a handful of employees commented on posts about the news. Later, company leaders disabled comments on posts discussing the antitrust laswuits, including those from Zuckerberg and Newstead, as part of an October directive from Facebook's chief.

“Given that, you know, anything that any of you say internally is, of course, available to be subpoenaed or used in any of these investigations, I just think we should make sure that people aren't just, you know, mouthing off about this and saying things that may reflect inaccurate data, or generally just are kind of incomplete,” he said in a company-wide meeting in October that was previously reported by BuzzFeed News. “You shouldn't be emailing about these things and you shouldn't really be discussing this in non-privileged forums across the company.”

Newsletter

Related Articles

Saudi Press
0:00
0:00
Close
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Colombian President Petro Vows to Mobilize Volunteers for Gaza and Joins List of Fighters
Nvidia and Abu Dhabi’s TII Launch First AI-&-Robotics Lab in the Middle East
UK, Canada, and Australia Officially Recognise Palestine in Historic Shift
New Eye Drops Show Promise in Replacing Reading Glasses for Presbyopia
Dubai Property Boom Shows Strain as Flippers Get Buyer’s Remorse
Top AI Researchers Are Heading Back to China as U.S. Struggles to Keep Pace
JWST Data Brings TRAPPIST-1e Closer to Earth-Like Habitability
UAE-US Stargate Project Poised to Make Abu Dhabi a Global AI Powerhouse
Trump and Starmer Clash Over UK Recognition of Palestinian State Amid State Visit
Saudi Arabia cracks down on music ‘lounges’ after conservative backlash
Saudi Arabia Signs ‘Strategic Mutual Defence’ Pact with Pakistan, Marking First Arab State to Gain Indirect Access to Nuclear Strike Capabilities in the Region
Sam Altman sells the 'Wedding Estate' in Hawaii for 49 million dollars
Turkish car manufacturer Togg Enters German Market with 5-Star Electric Sedan and SUV to Challenge European EV Brands
World’s Longest Direct Flight China Eastern to Launch 29-Hour Shanghai–Buenos Aires Direct Flight via Auckland in December
New OpenAI Study Finds Majority of ChatGPT Use Is Personal, Not Professional
Kuwait opens bidding for construction of three cities to ease housing crunch.
This Week in AI: Meta’s Superintelligence Push, xAI’s Ten Billion-Dollar Raise, Genesis AI’s Robotics Ambitions, Microsoft Restructuring, Amazon’s Million-Robot Milestone, and Google’s AlphaGenome Update
Indian Student Engineers Propose “Project REBIRTH” to Protect Aircraft from Crashes Using AI, Airbags and Smart Materials
Could AI Nursing Robots Help Healthcare Staffing Shortages?
Turkish authorities seize leading broadcaster amid fraud and tax investigation
Qatari prime minister says Netanyahu ‘killed any hope’ for Israeli hostages
Apple Introduces Ultra-Thin iPhone Air, Enhanced 17 Series and New Health-Focused Wearables
Big Oil Slashes Jobs and Investments Amid Prolonged Low Crude Prices
Social Media Access Curtailed in Turkey After CHP Calls for Rallies Following Police Blockade of Istanbul Headquarters
Did the Houthis disrupt the internet in the Middle East? Submarine cables cut in the Red Sea
Gold Could Reach Nearly $5,000 if Fed Independence Is Undermined, Goldman Sachs Warns
Uruguay, Colombia and Paraguay Secure Places at 2026 World Cup
Trump Administration Advances Plans to Rebrand Pentagon as Department of War Instead of the Fake Term Department of Defense
Tether Expands into Gold Sector with Profit-Driven Diversification
Trump’s New War – and the ‘Drug Tyrant’ Fearing Invasion: ‘1,200 Missiles Aimed at Us’
At the Parade in China: Laser Weapons, 'Eagle Strike,' and a Missile Capable of 'Striking Anywhere in the World'
Information Warfare in the Age of AI: How Language Models Become Targets and Tools
Israeli Airstrike in Yemen Kills Houthi Prime Minister
After the Shock of Defeat, Iranians Yearn for Change
YouTube Altered Content by Artificial Intelligence – Without Permission
Iran Faces Escalating Water Crisis as Protests Spread
More Than Half a Million Evacuated as Typhoon Kajiki Heads for Vietnam
HSBC Switzerland Ends Relationships with Over 1,000 Clients from Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Qatar, and Egypt
Sharia Law Made Legally Binding in Austria Despite Warnings Over 'Incompatible' Values
Dogfights in the Skies: Airbus on Track to Overtake Boeing and Claim Aviation Supremacy
Tim Cook Promises an AI Revolution at Apple: "One of the Most Significant Technologies of Our Generation"
Are AI Data Centres the Infrastructure of the Future or the Next Crisis?
Miles Worth Billions: How Airlines Generate Huge Profits
Zelenskyy Returns to White House Flanked by European Allies as Trump Pressures Land-Swap Deal with Putin
Beijing is moving into gold and other assets, diversifying away from the dollar
Cristiano Ronaldo Makes Surprise Stop at New Hong Kong Museum
Zelenskyy to Visit Washington after Trump–Putin Summit Yields No Agreement
×