US authorities file antitrust lawsuits against Facebook. The company will be challenged, says The Washington Post, over the acquisition of two rivals, WhatsApp and Instagram.
The reason for this challenge is the result of those purchases: the creation of “an anti-competitive social networking giant,” as they would describe it in the filing of charges, which would have left users with few alternatives of any quality beyond Facebook’s proprietary conglomerate of options. Facebook, “an anti-competitive giant
The acquisitions would also have served to accumulate a large amount of user data with which to combat its competition and that could also be used against Facebook, according to the U.S. newspaper.
This move by prosecutors would add to the antitrust investigation that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission would also be ending and that covers not only Facebook, but other technology companies in the land of stars and stripes.
The U.S. antitrust agencies would have weighed the possibility of arguing in the lawsuits against Facebook that these purchases have left users with worse services, the published information explains. According to the sources, it would point to less protection of privacy as well as less competition.
Regarding the use of data, it is pointed out that the company led by Mark Zuckerberg could have made use of all of them to try to eliminate its rivals, and that is one of the approaches that could be sustained in these lawsuits of more than forty prosecutors.
However, sources at The Washington Post acknowledge that the investigations are not over and that means that the state and federal lawsuits that are likely to be filed could go another way if investigators change their minds while the investigations continue.