According to engadget, Meta has won a major antitrust case that could have forced it to spin off Instagram and WhatsApp. The ruling came from US District Judge James Boasberg on Tuesday, who determined the Federal Trade Commission failed to prove Meta currently holds monopoly power. The FTC originally filed the antitrust charges in 2020 during President Donald Trump’s first term, arguing that Meta’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp harmed competition. Key executives including Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, and Adam Mosseri testified during the weeks-long trial earlier this year. The judge specifically cited TikTok’s explosive growth as evidence that Meta faces substantial competition. If the FTC had succeeded, it could have required Meta to unwind its acquisitions of both Instagram and WhatsApp.
TikTok changed everything
Here’s the thing that really swung this case: the competitive landscape looks completely different now than when the FTC first filed in 2020. Judge Boasberg basically said that even if Meta had monopoly power in the past, the agency needed to prove it still has that power today. And TikTok’s rise completely changed the equation. Zuckerberg himself testified that Meta’s growth had “slowed down dramatically” as TikTok became more popular. The FTC tried to define the market narrowly as “personal social networking” apps, which would have excluded TikTok and YouTube. But the judge wasn’t buying it. He wrote that including TikTok alone was enough to defeat the FTC’s monopoly argument.
What this means for big tech
This ruling is huge for Meta and potentially for other tech giants facing antitrust scrutiny. The FTC could still appeal, but for now, Meta gets to keep its empire intact. It’s interesting how the very platform that’s been eating Meta’s lunch—TikTok—ended up being its saving grace in court. The decision suggests that courts are looking at today’s competitive reality, not what the landscape looked like when these acquisitions happened years ago. Remember, Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion in 2012 and WhatsApp for $19 billion in 2014. At the time, regulators approved both deals. Now the FTC was trying to unwind them based on how dominant they’ve become. But the court essentially said you can’t punish success if there’s genuine competition in the market.
The broader implications
So where does this leave the broader antitrust push against Big Tech? The FTC under Chair Lina Khan has been aggressive in challenging tech mergers, but this loss is pretty significant. It shows how hard it is to prove monopoly power in fast-moving digital markets. Companies can legitimately point to new competitors that didn’t exist when the government first started investigating. Think about it—if a company like Meta can successfully argue that TikTok represents real competition, what does that mean for cases against other tech giants? The ruling also highlights how quickly the tech landscape evolves. What looked like an unassailable position a few years ago can be disrupted almost overnight. Meta’s own statement on the case emphasized that the competitive environment has fundamentally changed. The judge apparently agreed.
