The FTC has argued in the lawsuit, which it first brought under President Donald Trump in December 2020, that Meta, then known as Facebook, engaged in anticompetitive behavior by buying Instagram and WhatsApp in 2012 and 2014, respectively, because it feared the apps would become rivals.

The FTC is calling in court for Meta to sell off the two apps, which antitrust experts say would dramatically reshape the social media landscape.

“Meta has for many years reaped massive economic profits beyond what you would expect to see in a competitive environment,” Matheson said.

Matheson said Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg would be the FTC’s first witness and could be called to the stand as soon as Monday. Other witnesses scheduled to appear at some point during the trial include former Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, the heads of Instagram and WhatsApp, and employees at other social media apps.

During Meta attorney Mark Hansen’s opening remarks, he argued that Meta has a host of major competitors, including YouTube and TikTok, that are thriving and competing with Meta for user attention in a healthy and competitive environment.

“This case is a grab bag of FTC theories at war with the facts and at war with the law,” Hansen said, accusing the government agency of largely ignoring the colossal presence of TikTok.

The FTC’s entire case relies on the argument that Instagram does not compete with TikTok, “which makes no sense,” Hansen said, observing that Meta usage ticked up during the temporary TikTok ban earlier this year.

The attorney said its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp were “pro-competitive” and “one of the greatest consumer welfare success stories of the twenty-first century.”

The trial comes less than two weeks after Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg made a pilgrimage to the White House, and as the billionaire CEO has shown signs of wooing Trump through donating to and attending the president’s inauguration, lurching its content moderation policies toward the Right, and admitting to once censoring certain content, including about COVID-19, in response to pressure from the Biden administration.

Zuckerberg’s recent visit with Trump came as part of an effort by Meta to reach a settlement agreement before the trial, the Wall Street Journal reported.

META ENDS DEI PROGRAM CITING CHANGING US ‘LANDSCAPE’

Judge James Boasberg listened and took notes on the opening statements through the afternoon. Boasberg has been the presiding judge in the case since its inception in 2020, but the judge has been dominating headlines in the past month not so much for the approaching massive antitrust trial but for an unrelated case he was assigned to that challenged Trump’s controversial deportation operation under the Alien Enemies Act.

Trump called for Boasberg to be impeached over a temporary restraining order Boabserg granted, but House Republicans avoided taking that route. This would have been an unusual move, as judges have historically only been impeached for unethical misconduct, such as bribery. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts responded to Trump’s outrage with Boaberg by issuing a rare condemnation of the suggestion that a judge should be impeached for handing down an unfavorable ruling.