American justice has rejected two antitrust lawsuits against Facebook

Shares of Facebook rose after two major legal victories and the Menlo Park giant broke the market value of a trillion dollars for the first time

(photo: Unsplash) A US federal court gave a major blow to attempts to dismember Big Tech, starting with Facebook. The court dismissed two separate antitrust cases filed against the company founded by Mark Zuckerberg. District Court Judge James Boasberg of the District of Columbia found the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) complaint against the social networking giant was too vague, while another lawsuit filed by a coalition of 45 US states was also dismissed. because the alleged violations occurred too long ago.

The lawsuit filed late last year by the Federal Trade Commission aimed to end Facebook's acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp, accusing it of benefiting from a position of dominant market. "The FTC complaint says almost nothing concrete on the key question of how much power Facebook actually had, and still has, in an adequately defined antitrust product market," Judge Boasberg wrote. However, the FTC will have until July 29 to present a new complaint with more precise and in-depth documentation.

The other lawsuit, brought forward by the attorneys general of most of the American states, concerned the modalities of Facebook's acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp in 2012 and 2014 and aimed to force the giant to sell them . Accusations that the Menlo Park company had called "absurd". In this case, Judge Boasberg ruled that this request came too long after the purchase transactions. The states would not have provided "reasonable justification" to explain why they waited between six and eight years to decide to sue Facebook.

Facebook's stock market value after these court wins it exceeded $ 1 trillion - or trillion - for the first time. Shares of Facebook in fact rose 4.2% rapidly. Facebook is thus becoming the last of the big five tech companies to hit the $ 1 trillion valuation milestone. But Facebook doesn't have too many other reasons to celebrate. According to The Verge, this court decision "could provoke more aggressive action by lawmakers as Congress is currently pushing forward on broad antitrust technology reforms." Last week, in fact, the House Justice Commission approved a list of bills that target the market power of Big Tech. These include large merger bans and new interoperability requirements. All measures are directed to the House and parallel bills should be presented to the Senate in the coming weeks.


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