Meta will be facing the first trial of its antitrust lawsuit next week on April 14.
The lawsuit accuses Meta of monopolistic practices through strategic acquisitions of Instagram and Whatsapp and dominating the social media space. The company could be forced to sell off both Instagram and Whatsapp if judges find Meta hampering fair competition and conducting unfair monopolistic trade practices.
Now, Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, is lobbying the current administration to drop the lawsuit before it hits trial, WSJ reports.
The lawyers for the social media giant have already tried to push back dates requesting dismissal and then through an extended discovery period. With a trial closing in, Zuckerberg was seen visiting The White House again last week, his third visit during Donald Trump’s presidency, as reports of him attempting to cozy up to the president to alleviate his political woes circle.
The lawsuit brought on by Federal Trade Regulation (FTC) in conjunction with 46 US states was filed against Meta in December 2020. Initially dismissed in 2021 it was refiled with an amendment and survived a dismissal appeal from Meta.
Facebook, now Meta, acquired Instagram in 2012 for $1 million in cash and Facebook stocks. At the time, Zuckerberg wrote, “This is an important milestone for Facebook because it’s the first time we’ve ever acquired a product and company with so many users. We don’t plant on doing many more of these, if any at all.”
However, in 2014 Facebook (now Meta) acquired Whatsapp for $19 million, including cash, Facebook shares and restricted stock units vested over a 4 year period. It is Meta’s biggest acquisition to date.
Meta earned $164.5 billion in revenue in 2024, approximately 97% of which came from digital advertising spread across its social media channels.
Meta’s stock was down 5.60% in the past month, impacted by market volatility.
It also faces two separate allegations of copyright infringement in the US and UK. Authors including Kazuo Ishiguro, Val McDermid and Kate Mosse in the UK have appealed to Lisa Nandy, the secretary of state for culture, media and sport to hold Meta executives responsible for using pirated versions of their works to train its AI model Llama.
In the US, comedian Sarah Silverman, Richard Kadrey and Christopher Golden have filed a lawsuit against Meta and OpenAI with similar allegations of using copyrighted material from their books to train its AI models.
Amidst Metaverse expansion and open-source AI development, giants like Meta and OpenAI also battle with questions of “fair use”, ethical AI and what constitutes copyright infringement. It remains to be seen how it is handled in court and might set precedent for future copyright cases involving AI training.