The Trump administration is set to take on Meta, the social media giant that owns Facebook and Instagram, in court starting Monday in a case that could stand as a key first test for President Trump’s antitrust team.  The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will attempt to prove that Meta has mainta ined a monopoly over social networking through its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp, all while the agency faces internal upheaval following President Trump’s ouster of two Democratic commissioners.  “This is not just the first test of the current administration, but it's also a test of something that they started at the end of the last Trump administration,” said Paul Swanson, who leads the antitrust and competition practice at law firm Holland Hart.  “It's part of a throughline from Trump 1.0 to Trump 2.0, where we can see is this administration going to continue on a course to challenge the power of Big Tech and will it be successful in doing so?” he added.  The FTC sued Meta, then Facebook, in the final months of the first Trump administration, accusing the tech firm of strategically seeking to eliminate competition through key acquisitions — Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014.  After the case was initially dismissed in 2021, the agency was allowed to amend its complaint, and the judge overseeing the case ruled in November that Meta had to face a trial.  The trial is scheduled to stretch on for several weeks out of the E. Barrett Prettyman courthouse in Washington, D.C. with U.S. District Judge James Boasberg setting aside court dates through early July.  The FTC has argued that by eliminating its competition through acquisitions, Meta has reaped large profits while consumers’ experience has suffered.   After initial attempts to compete with Instagram and WhatsApp as they gained prominence in the early 2010s, Meta ultimately bought the platforms for $1 billion and $19 billion, respectively.  “For more than a decade, Meta has maintained a monopoly over personal social networking (“PSN”) services in the United States,” the FTC wrote in a pre-trial brief filed Thursday.  “Rather than outcompeting its rivals on the merits of its PSN offering (Facebook), Meta chose to protect its position through anticompetitive means: buying out the significant threats it identified in Instagram and WhatsApp,” it continued.  However, Meta contends it faces competition from other social media companies that the FTC fails to consider as part of the personal social networking market.  “The FTC’s lawsuit against Meta defies reality,” a company spokesperson said in a statement. “The evidence at trial will show what every 17-year-old in the world knows: Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp compete with Chinese-owned TikTok, YouTube, X, iMessage and many others.”  It has also emphasized that its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp were both approved by the agency, arguing the case “sends the message that no deal is ever truly final.”  “Regulators should be supporting American innovation, rather than seeking to break up a great American company and further advantaging China on critical issues like AI,” the spokesperson added.  The trial is very “high stakes” for Meta, which could face a breakup if it loses, former FTC commissioner William Kovacic told The Hill.  “If Meta loses here, there is a genuine possibility that they'll be forced to dismantle the company they began building up 10 years or so ago when they acquired these firms,” Kovacic said.  The case raises its own questions for the federal government, testing the limits of antitrust enforcement in the present day.  “This is a test of whether antitrust enforcement agencies still have that kind of Old Testament justice, power to break up big companies,” Swanson said.   “The question is does the antitrust law still give the enforcement agencies that kind of power in the context of these much less static much more fluid dynamic markets,” he added.  The case’s future has remained up in the air in recent weeks, as Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has reportedly lobbied Trump and White House officials to agree to a settlement before trial.  Zuckerberg, who faced Trump’s ire after Meta banned the president from its platforms in the wake of the Jan. 6 riots, has attempted to mend his relationship with Trump since the election, donating to his inaugural fund and shifting the company’s approach to content moderation.  Meta announced in January that it would be eliminating its third-party fact-checking program in favor of a community-based program like X’s Community Notes. The move was praised by Trump, who suggested the company had “come a long way.” The tech giant also informed staff in January that it planned to cut its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) team and related programs, aligning with the Trump administration’s opposition to diversity efforts.  Former FTC Chair Lina Khan suggested at the time that Meta and other major tech firms facing antitrust lawsuits might be looking for a “sweetheart deal” from the Trump administration.  “It is true that the FTC has been very successful, including in its ongoing litigations against Amazon and Facebook. And so, it’s only going to be natural that those companies are going to want to come in and see, can they get some type of sweetheart deal,” Khan said.  “Can they get some type of settlement that’s cheap, that settles for pennies on the dollar and lets them escape from a liability finding in court?” she continued.    Across the first Trump administration and the Biden administration, antitrust officials have brought cases against several tech giants, including Google, Amazon and Apple.   The Department of Justice (DOJ), which also handles antitrust enforcement, won a landmark antitrust case against Google in August, with the judge finding it illegally maintained a monopoly over online search.  As Zuckerberg has ramped up pressure on Trump to settle the case, newly appointed FTC chair Andrew Ferguson emphasized last week that he would follow the president’s orders while also signaling such an outcome was unlikely.  “I think it’s important for me to obey lawful orders,” he told The Verge. “I think that the president recognizes that we’ve got to enforce the laws, so I’d be very surprised if anything like that ever happened.”  However, Ferguson’s deference to the White House comes at a key moment, as Trump has sought to assert his control over independent agencies, like the FTC.   Last month, Trump fired the FTC's Democratic commissioners, Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, the latest in a series of high-level dismissals at independent agencies.   Top officials, like Bedoya and Slaughter, have long been considered shielded from removal by the president under a 90-year-old Supreme Court precedent. However, the Trump administration appears poised to challenge this long settled caselaw.   If the White House ultimately intervenes at the FTC on Zuckerberg’s behalf, it would represent a major policy shift, Kovacic noted.  “The way in which it is resolved is a major test, not only of antitrust law, but of the larger approach that the Trump administration will take towards tech and the business community,” he said.  “It will say that the the road to success runs through the White House,” he added. “And if one company successfully takes that journey, many others will follow. You'll see a double line out to the Atlantic Ocean.”  ...read more read less