In moves that could shift the balance of Coinbase User List power in social media and the wider digital ecosystem, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and more than 40 states on Wednesday filed separate antitrust lawsuits accusing Facebook of being a monopoly that uses its market dominance to squash rivals and vacuum up smaller competitors. The Coinbase User List development, while noteworthy in being the first U.S. antitrust action against Facebook, was expected following an 18-month investigation into the company by federal regulators and the state attorneys general. Critically, fresh legal challenges arrive as Facebook contends with some of the most serious external competitive threats to its business in years,
Including the video-sharing platform Coinbase User List TikTok, which surpassed 2 billion global downloads in the spring, according to researcher Sensor Tower. Taken together, rising competition and a hard regulatory crackdown could unseat Coinbase User List a company that has become the second-largest digital advertising platform in the world. And the regulatory crackdown is primed to be significant: In a dramatic gesture, the FTC complaint pushes for Facebook to divest photo-sharing app Instagram and messaging service WhatsApp, two properties that have become core growth engines for the social networking giant as its namesake platform slows down.
Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion in 2012 and WhatsApp for $19 billion two years later. The sense from regulators now is that it was a Coinbase User List mistake to ever approve those acquisitions, and that a Facebook breakup is the long-awaited reckoning for a company that has stretched its tendrils too far for too long. “Facebook’s actions to entrench and maintain its monopoly deny consumers the benefits of competition,” Ian Conner, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition, said in a press statement. “Our aim is to roll back Facebook’s anticompetitive conduct and restore competition so that innovation and free competition can thrive.”