Feds lay down marker in Facebook fight

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on Thursday filed an amended complaint in its antitrust case against Facebook after an initial courtroom setback earlier this summer.

The new complaint makes the same central argument that Facebook has maintained a monopoly on “personal social networking” by gobbling up potential competitors and enforcing unfair agreements, while offering new evidence and analysis.

It uses Facebook’s data on daily active users to counter those concerns from Judge James E. Boasberg, an Obama-era nominee. The FTC noted that Facebook has “tens of millions” more monthly users than the next largest personal social networking provider, Snapchat.

“Measurements of a personal social networking service’s active user base and how much users use the service are appropriate measurements of market shares and market power for personal social networking services,” the complaint states.

Facebook doubled down in its defense against the allegations of anticompetitive behavior, noting as it did in response to the first complaint that the acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram were “reviewed and cleared many years ago, and our platform policies were lawful.”

“The FTC’s claims are an effort to rewrite antitrust laws and upend settled expectations of merger review, declaring to the business community that no sale is ever final. We fight to win people’s time and attention every day, and we will continue vigorously defending our company,” a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement.

The amended complaint was filed the day of the FTC’s extended deadline. One of the new areas of focus in the case is the importance of the mobile app space since the beginning of the 2010s and how Facebook allegedly worked to stymie emerging threats in it.