Instagram was and still is in a highly competitive market. Previously it was Snapchat at the time and now it's Tiktok. Not to mention YouTube shorts, Reddit, Twitter, and every other service focused on video and pictures.
I don't think any social media consumer is lacking choice.
Regardless of how much “choice” there is in a market, FB made an anti-competitive play. Now we all have n-1 choices.
The question of whether society should allow companies to perform anti-competitive actions should not be “will we be left with enough choices?”, but should be “is this an anti-competitive action?”
A true accounting of board level corporate motivations is not available. The standard line is typically something like “we are acquiring our smaller rival to more effectively compete with our larger rival”. I.e “we are acquiring a small desktop publishing start up to compete with the largest cloud computing provider”. Or in this case: “we are acquiring a small photo sharing company to compete against Google/Youtube”.
Are we talking past each other? How is that anti competitive? This is literally the opposite: they embraced and validated their competitor by making them a huge offer, showing that it pays off to compete
I disagree that it is anti competitive, it is not "killing" competition. Killing competition is setting prices that makes the competition go bankrupt, it's assassinating people, it's pushing for changes that prevent the competition from working in the same environment, etc. here nothing prevented instagram from saying no and getting bigger.
The government has alleged that Meta's acquisition of WhatsApp and Instagram was done to reduce competition. Nothing has been established as anti-competitive or not yet, that's why it's in court. Evidence from both sides will be presented. I'm not sure how else to answer that question.
Its not the same as forcing them to shut down or say yes. They wanted one less competitor yes, as every company does, but they didn't prevent the company from growing and existing.
Fair point, though they typically only become problematic (aka are acted on/legislated against) when they significantly distort the market to a degree people start really complaining about it.
Usually due to either a monopsony/cartel/monopoly which controls most of the market doing it successfully.
If the companies in the lower 5% of a market price fix or the like, no one usually cares. Even 20%, usually.
The Sherman antitrust act speaks about ‘restraints of trade’ because it has to actually restrain trade, which requires a significant degree of control - which a successful/actual monopoly, monopsony, or cartel can do.
Technically, even attempting to do it is illegal, but going after every company that tries has a bit of the same feel as locking up every single toddler because they took a swing at someone or threatened them with their cute little stubby kid scissors.
It’s a waste of resources, not in anyone’s interest, stops behavior most people would consider necessary/healthy to some degree, causes much worse problems than it solves, etc.
On the other hand, locking up a successful serial killer is just good public policy.
The difference between the two is more a matter of the success and effectiveness of their tactics, not really intent.
