The president of the Federal Trade Commission, Andrew Ferguson, previews the start of the antitrust case of the agency against Meta and details the deregular agenda of the Trump administration.
The president of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Andrew Ferguson, weighed on the antitrust case of the agency against the meta-platforms of the social media giant during an appearance Monday in “Mornings with Maria”.
The FTC and the meta went to the court on Monday morning while the trial arising from the agency alleging that the technological company “is engaged in anti -competitive acquisitions to protect its dominant position” in personal social networks officially started.
The agency’s trial takes a particular problem with the purchases of Instagram and WhatsApp by Meta and calls on the technological company to give in or reconfigure its companies to “restore the competition”. These massive agreements took place in 2012 and 2014 respectively.
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“Marines with Maria”, host Maria Bartiromo reported that a Meta spokesman said during the weekend that “more than 10 years after the FTC examined and erased our acquisitions, the action of the commission in this case sends the message that no agreement is never really final.”
Commissioner Andrew Ferguson was used to chair the FTC last month. (Screenshot / Federal Commerce Commission / Fox News)
Asked about the Meta Trial, Ferguson told Bartiromo that President Donald Trump “had” started this trial in 2020 and that we see it today “.
“On the purpose of transactions, you know, the FTC does not eliminate transactions, it tries to predict whether a transaction will be anti-competitive,” he said.
“But here we have real evidence that the transactions proved to be anti -competitive and gave Facebook and Meta a huge amount of power, the power we all saw in the floor in 2020,” said Ferguson during his appearance “Mornings with Maria”. “And this is how this case consists, consists in approaching the power of the meta and ensuring that the situation we had in 2020 can never happen again.”
Ferguson said the FTC “certainly believes” that Meta is a “monopoly”.
On Monday, April 7, Meta should end all third -party facts on its American platforms. (Nikolas Kokovlis / Nurphoto via / Getty Images)
“We believe that the evidence that we are going to put in trial will show that it is a monopoly,” he said. “And look, we have all seen in 2020 how many power these social media platforms have on all aspects of our daily life, our politics, our elections, our social life, our economic life, and that’s what it is about, consists in approaching this kind of power and ensuring that 2020 can never happen again.”
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Meta, which is led by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, closed its doors against FTC’s claims on a monopoly and qualified the case of the “weak” agency.
In a press release During the weekend, the technological company argued that it “faces strong competition in a quickly changing technological landscape which includes American and foreign competitors” and that competition “has only increased” since the FTC filed its complaint.
Meta said that the FTC had “gerrymate a fictitious market in which Facebook and Instagram only compete with Snapchat and an application called Mewe”. He said his market share was less than 30% when Tiktok and Youtube are taken into account and also competes with other social media platforms.
| Teleprinter | Security | Last | Change | Change % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Meta | Meta Platforms Inc. | 531.48 | -12.09 | -2.22% |
“It is absurd that the FTC is trying to break a large American company at the same time as the administration is trying to save Tiktok belonging to Chinese,” said Meta. “And, that makes no sense for regulators to try to weaken American companies at the moment, we need the most that they are investing in the victory of competition with China for leadership in AI.”
During his appearance in “Mornings With Maria”, Ferguson also told Bartiromo that he adopted a “different” approach with the FTC with regard to mergers and acquisitions and described himself as an “anti-trust executor”.
The headquarters of the Federal Trade Commission in Washington, DC, September 28, 2024. (Stefani Reynolds / Bloomberg via / Getty Images)
“I think it is really important to protect all Americans in all aspects of their daily life by ensuring that we have no monopolies and that we have no fraud,” he said. “But, you know, mergers and acquisitions are an important part of the growth of the economy, it is an important part of the way in which we have innovation and dynamism in our economy.”
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Ferguson said he saw the role of the FTC to watch the mergers and “if we think they are anti -competitive, go to court” and “move away quickly” if the agency does not think they are.
Trump chose Ferguson to become the president of the FTC on the first day of his second presidential term.
