Meta Concludes Defense in FTC Trial Over Instagram, WhatsApp Acquisitions

In the final days of a high-stakes antitrust trial, Meta Platforms Inc. rested its defense, urging a federal judge to consider a different vision of the social media landscape — one where Instagram and WhatsApp may have floundered, not flourished, without Meta’s backing. For five weeks, the Federal Trade Commission laid out its case against Meta, portraying the tech giant’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp as anti-competitive moves that stifled innovation and consumer choice. But in the trial’s final week, Meta pushed back, asserting that its stewardship enhanced both platforms, possibly elevating them to heights they could not have reached independently,  according to The Verge. Meta’s legal team concluded its case after just four days in court, having already questioned many witnesses earlier in the trial when they were called by the FTC. Among its final witnesses were WhatsApp cofounder Brian Acton and an early Instagram infrastructure leader, who testified that Meta provided critical resources and technical expertise that allowed the apps to scale — contrasting earlier testimony from Instagram cofounder Kevin Systrom. Systrom had claimed Meta withheld tools that could have helped Instagram evolve more safely and robustly. Meta’s core argument hinges on the notion that these apps did
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