US Government Files Lawsuit To Dismantle Facebook

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the U.S government have filed antitrust lawsuits against Facebook requesting that the company should be broken up.

The lawsuit pinpoints Facebook’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp in 2012 and 2014, adding that the tech giant purchased its competitors to eliminate competition. The lawsuit also notes that Facebook attempted to acquire Snapchat and Twitter. It is asking for an injunction to divest Instagram and WhatsApp.

“Since toppling early rival Myspace and achieving monopoly power, Facebook has turned to playing defense through anticompetitive means,” the FTC said in the lawsuit. “After identifying two significant competitive threats to its dominant position — Instagram and WhatsApp — Facebook moved to squelch those threats by buying the companies.” The complaint went on to cite a 2008 email in which CEO Mark Zuckerberg allegedly said, “It is better to buy than compete.”

The suit claims that Facebook tries to buy out competition before rivals even begin to gain traction. However, the acquisitions were approved over a decade ago. They have also failed to protect US private public data.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke to his employees on Wednesday to tell them that they will fight the cases.

“Overall, we disagree with the government’s allegations,” Zuckerberg said via CNET. “The reality is that we compete with many other services in everything we do, and we compete fairly.”