If Meta can convince the court that the definition of the FTC market is wrong and that Tiktok is Meta’s largest rival, then Meta’s market share drops below monopolist standards “, underucing” the case of the FTC, reported Big Tech on Trial.
But are Facebook and Instagram substitutes for Tiktok?
Although Meta paints the image that Tiktok users naturally have gravity to Instagram during the Tiktok failure, it is clear that Meta has strongly announced to move them in this direction. There was even a conspiracy theory that Meta bought Tiktok in the hours preceding Tiktok, Wired reported, because users have noticed that meta-banners encouraging them to link their Tiktok accounts to meta-platforms. However, even the reported Meta Ad Blitz apparently did not influence that many Tiktok users, because data from the sensor tower at the time apparently indicated that “Instagram and Facebook seemed only to receive a modest increase in daily active users and downloads” during the Tiktok failure, Wired.
Perhaps a more interesting question that the court can entertain is not the place where Tiktok users go when Tiktok is broken, but where Instagram or Facebook users turn if they no longer want to use these platforms. If the FTC can say that people looking for a destination to connect with friends or family would not replace Tiktok for this purpose, their definition of the market could fly.
Kenneth Dintzer, partner of Crowell & Moring and the former senior lawyer in the Monopoly Winty Research Affair of the Doj, told Ars that the Chief Judge of the case, James Boasberg, clearly indicated the summary judgment which recognizes the rivalry of Meta with Tiktok “does not really answer the question of friends and the family.”
So, even if Zuckerberg was “quite convincing”, his testimony on Tiktok may not move the judge a lot. However, there was an exchange at the trial where Boasberg asked: “How important is it if friends are on a particular platform, if friends can share outside this?” Zuckerberg praised this as a “good question” and “explained that it does not matter because people can share in a fluid way on all platforms, each using its value as a” discovery engine “,” Big Tech on Trial reported.
