A district court dismissed the Federal Trade Commission's antitrust complaint against Facebook on Monday finding that "the agency's Complaint is legally insufficient," in its opinion. The court also dismissed a parallel case brought by state attorneys general.
Facebook filed to have the suits dismissed in March, arguing that they had not adequately defined the market that Facebook has monopoly power in. "Virtually ignoring the relentlessly competitive business that provides Facebook with substantially all of its revenues (advertising), the FTC purports instead to define a free 'personal social networking' user market with only the vaguest of limits and without reference to what consumers consider acceptable substitutes," Facebook wrote in a blog post in March.
The district court appears to have agreed with Facebook, writing in its opinion on the FTC complaint, "The FTC has failed to plead enough facts to plausibly establish a necessary element of all of its Section 2 claims — namely, that Facebook has monopoly power in the market for Personal Social Networking (PSN) Services."
The court said, however, that this issue could be resolved with an amended complaint, so has only dismissed the FTC's complaint, not the case itself.
The same cannot be said for the state attorneys general case against Facebook, which the court dismissed in its entirety.
Climate TRACE's data show emissions at the facility-level.Image: Climate TRACE