Thanks for highlighting this part of the text. It’s shocking to see how vague the complaint was and I hope they get their facts together because this action needs to happen. If I recall correctly, this antitrust lawsuit was filed prematurely because trump wanted to claim credit for it and there was quite a hullabaloo about it at the time.

The CNBC article says 48 states were also participating alongside the FTC? That gives a (surely misleading or unwarranted?) impression of a substantial failure.

If the FTC did file prematurely for political reasons they should've known that the case didn't have a chance. I hope they kept working behind the scenes on a well-formed one. Maybe that was the original plan, rush in with a case to please the Trump administration then follow up with the actual complaint once they finish it. Then again, this may be wishful thinking. Incompetence is a much simpler explanation.

FTC decisions are made by a majority vote of the commissioners. No more than three can be of the same party. It is unlikely this case was filed early for political reasons.

The judge notes two problems (at least!):

(1.) the FTC approved the purchase of Instagram and WhatsApp. Why does it want to change its mind?

(2.) they don’t even attempt a serious market definition. If Facebook is a monopoly, what is it monopolizing? Who else is in the market? This is an absolutely central question in any monopolization or horizontal merger case. Indeed, getting the judge to accept your theory of the market is a big part of the job.

The economics staff at the FTC is not incompetent (I know several people there), but they have a tough job in this case. If it has been up to me I would not have allowed the Instagram and WhatsApp purchases, but the FTC itself approved them!

Well regarding point 1), Facebook made promises during the acquisition process that it subsequently broke.

were those promises made to FTC specifically?

Yes, to get approval for the acquisitions, Facebook made certain promises to the FTC.

Which were?

here's the letter the FTC sent to facebook about whatsapp. https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/public_statements... I have no clue about IG dealings but wouldn't be surprised if they predated monopoly concerns

And were those promises formalized in a contract somewhere?

> If the FTC did file prematurely for political reasons they should've known that the case didn't have a chance.

Perhaps they did know the case wouldn't have a chance. Perhaps there isn't a plan to follow up with the actual complaint. It's not like the federal government has seriously pursued anti-trust activity in recent decades.

It’d be weird that the preeminent anti-trust academic just accepted a position as the head of the FTC with bipartisan if they didn’t intend to pursue antitrust. It’d be weird to offer it, and a bad decision she chose to accept it.

Just because she is an antitrust academic doesn't mean she automatically believes there is a winnable lawsuit here. If she doesn't think she's likely to win, perhaps she might choose not to follow through on the lawsuit.

Ouch. The judge didn't really hold back there, the guys in FTC must be stinging. I'm not a fan of FB but it doesn't sound like FTC deserved to win that case.

yup, they brought a weak case against the giant, should have prepared better.

Not to be combative: It seems like you're implying that this failed because Facebook is powerful, but I interpeted this the other way around -- "Facebook is a popular blue website, and maybe did some stuff, but who cares? There are lots of websites."

I agree that if they brought the case they should have had an argument, but it's less clear that they should have brought the case, or that size was an issue.

Op said Weak case... Right at the beginning of their comment.

Yes but the question is that is there even a “stronger case” or is any case made weak due to the possibility of there being no case.

> Not sure what the FTC's game plan was going into an antitrust fight without a market share pitch.

Maybe their plan was to lose to destabilize any later lawsuit which would have had a reasonable chance of winning?

Hanlon's Razor

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

I've seen far too much malice feigning stupidity to ever take this concept seriously. There's a lot of stupidity, but there's also a lot of corruption parading around as stupidity.

Fundamentally I would argue that this conflates malice and greed. They may be bedfellows, but aren’t necessarily the same thing.

Regardless, this still wouldn’t break Hanlon’s Razor because when you have enough information to adequately explain corruption so devious that it has been intentionally dressed as stupidity, it is rarely explained adequately with mere stupidity.

I think that not all things can be sufficiently explained by stupidity no matter how intenslt people attempt to feign it.

Also, malice is inherently stupid.

If an action can be adequately explained by stupidity but requires more assumptions than explaining it via malice does, then accepting Hanlon's razor would be in violation of Occam's razor.

I wonder though if it needs to be malice or simply lack of will / motivation. If you have pressure from both sides (and the politics that initiated this) it can really kill any motivation to really dig and and do your job. Combine this with all the turbulence in federal gov positions, it might just feel like a total shit show to work there and some people may just putting in their time for the pension or w/e.

A lot of maybes, but I do wonder if the wheels of government are still recovering and whether the consequences of this are sometimes indirect and not so obvious. Bad management can leave waves.

TBH if I worked in public services over the last few year I'd probably feel pretty under-appreciated and it would be hard to motivate myself.

Borrowing from Wikipedia, I prefer this phrasing:

Misunderstandings and lethargy perhaps produce more wrong in the world than deceit and malice do. At least the latter two are certainly rarer.

You forget we're talking about politicians; typically you get both.

What is the razor we should use when it’s neither malice nor stupidity, but instead just an unwinnable case? It seems like way too many people think it’s easy to prove Facebook is a monopoly.

It probably would be easy to prove (or at least support the claim); it sounds more like the FTC didn't even try.

Indeed,

through I also think we might need to better differentiate between content platforms with social aspect (YouTube, TickTock), Social Networks (Facebook, Instagram?) and Messengers (WhatsApp, Signal, etc.).

Hanlon's whetstone: Sometimes it takes so much effort to be stupid, the malice is implied. Just, not necessarily in the direction you think.

Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by politics.

Mark Zuckerberg made some substantial (100s of millions I’ve read) donations to the DNC and proxies. It would be surprising that they would then almost immediately try to destroy his company. A quid pro quo is pretty believable.

Positive way of looking at it: Warning to political enemies/litmus test to see how court will respond

Negative way of looking at it: Virtue signaling/needing to appear to do something/campaign donation solicitation