The FTC’s case against Meta has been discredited not only by this AI

For his reinforcement appeal after a previously dismissed lawsuit against Meta, the FTC is looking far back into a deeply unrecognizable commercial past. The problem for the FTC is that it’s not just the present that completely discredits the FTC’s case and appeal.

For example, it was in 2012 and 2014 that Facebook bought Instagram and WhatsApp for $1 billion and $19 billion respectively. In its complaint, the FTC alleges “that for over a decade Meta has unlawfully maintained a monopoly on personal social networking services through anticompetitive conduct – buying the significant competitive threats it identified in Instagram and WhatsApp.” The charge itself defames the revival of an already dismissed lawsuit.

To see why, just consider the $20 billion spent to make the purchases that currently have the FTC up in arms. $20 billion to gain monopoly power? The critical point here is that the markets confirm the intransigence found in the previous question, and more importantly, they would confirm it then if anyone asked.

It’s not just that Facebook paid a relatively paltry $1 billion for Instagram (a screaming sign that it was buying a lot of things in 2012, none of which was a monopoly), it’s that Facebook’s stock fell after the acquisition. What was true for Instagram was also true for WhatsApp.

It’s a reminder that investors weren’t the only ones excited by Facebook’s allegedly offensive acquisitions. The FTC wasn’t surprised either. Why would it be? Investors saw many things in Instagram and WhatsApp’s markets, but as Facebook’s stock price reaffirms, “monopoly” status never crossed the lips of investors or antitrust officials at the FTC.

Fast forward to today, and 2026 specifically, it is important to note that in 2025 Meta spent over $70 billion on data centers alone. Stop and consider spending with the FTC’s appeal in mind. It is not insightful to point out that a company with monopoly power won’t and he couldn’t put such a significant amount of money to work.

The naysayer is informed by the simple truth that “monopolies” need not spend huge sums to protect a business which, because it is a monopoly, has no competition. Which explains why it couldn’t: if Meta had ever been a monopoly, there’s no way its shareholders would have ever authorized $70 billion in new spending intended to expand an already impenetrable moat.

All of this speaks to how much the FTC’s original 2020 lawsuit, along with the 2026 appeal of its dismissal, was and is a backward glance. Appealing in 2026 is as if antitrust authorities are blind not only to an ever-evolving social media sector, but also to what happened on November 30, 2022. It almost wastes words to point out that the technology sector has changed profoundly with the development of ChatGPT, so much so that the leading lights of technology have spent hundreds of efforts from November 2 to 30 billion. present and future of technology that will look nothing like the past.

Which is just a comment as weak as the FTC’s case was in 2020, its appeal for what the courts rejected is exponentially weaker in 2026. Look at ChatGPT and what followed, including the gigantic amounts of money spent by Meta and others. They seem to know more than any of us that they are many things, none of which are ‘monopoly’.