Facebook requests dismissal of anti-trust lawsuit | U.S. government and states ask judge to deny.

The Federal Trade Commission and a big group of U.S. states asked a federal court on Wednesday to deny Facebook Inc’s request to dismiss major antitrust lawsuits filed against the social media giant in December.

The FTC, in its filing, said Facebook bought photo-sharing app Instagram because Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg believed it was “a large and viable competitor” and purchased the messaging app WhatsApp to neutralize a nascent threat. The FTC has asked the court to order Facebook to sell those assets.

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The states, which had filed a separate antitrust lawsuit against Facebook, said in its filing: “Deploying a buy-or-bury scheme of predatory acquisitions and exclusionary conduct, Facebook successfully squashes, suppresses, and deters competition, entrenching its monopoly power to this day.”

Facebook had asked the court to dismiss the two lawsuits, alleging that they were brought “in the fraught environment of relentless criticism of Facebook for matters entirely unrelated to antitrust concerns.”

The FTC and states accused Facebook of breaking antitrust law to keep smaller competitors at bay and snapping up rivals, like Instagram for $1 billion in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014 for $19 billion.

All told, the federal government and states filed five lawsuits against Facebook and Alphabet Inc’s Google last year following bipartisan outrage over use and misuse of social media clout both in the economy and the political sphere.


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What Are
Geo-Poli-
Cyber™ Risks?

What Is Geo-Poli-Cyber™?

MLi Group created the terms Poli-Cyber™ and Geo-Poli-Cyber™ (GPC™) in 2012 and 2013 based on the philosophy that if you cannot identify and name the threat, you cannot mitigate that threat.

Geo-Poli-Cyber™ attacks are political, ideological, terrorist, extremist, ‘religious’, and/or geo-politically motivated.

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