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Message   VRSS    All   Meta Argues Enshittification Isn't Real   May 16, 2025
 5:20 PM  

Feed: Slashdot
Feed Link: https://slashdot.org/
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Title: Meta Argues Enshittification Isn't Real

Link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/05/16/20472...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Meta thinks there's no
reason to carry on with its defense after the Federal Trade Commission closed
its monopoly case, and the company has moved to end the trial early by
claiming that the FTC utterly failed to prove its case. "The FTC has no proof
that Meta has monopoly power," Meta's motion for judgment (PDF) filed
Thursday said, "and therefore the court should rule in favor of Meta."
According to Meta, the FTC failed to show evidence that "the overall quality
of Meta's apps has declined" or that the company shows too many ads to users.
Meta says that's "fatal" to the FTC's case that the company wielded monopoly
power to pursue more ad revenue while degrading user experience over time (an
Internet trend known as "enshittification";). And on top of allegedly showing
no evidence of "ad load, privacy, integrity, and features" degradation on
Meta apps, Meta argued there's no precedent for an antitrust claim rooted in
this alleged harm. "Meta knows of no case finding monopoly power based solely
on a claimed degradation in product quality, and the FTC has cited none,"
Meta argued. Meta has maintained throughout the trial that its users actually
like seeing ads. In the company's recent motion, Meta argued that the FTC
provided no insights into what "the right number of ads" should be, "let
alone" provide proof that "Meta showed more ads" than it would in a
competitive market where users could easily switch services if ad load became
overwhelming. Further, Meta argued that the FTC did not show evidence that
users sharing friends-and-family content were shown more ads. Meta noted that
it "does not profit by showing more ads to users who do not click on them,"
so it only shows more ads to users who click ads. Meta also insisted that
there's "nothing but speculation" showing that Instagram or WhatsApp would
have been better off or grown into rivals had Meta not acquired them. The
company claimed that without Meta's resources, Instagram may have died off.
Meta noted that Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom testified that his app was
"pretty broken and duct-taped" together, making it "vulnerable to spam"
before Meta bought it. Rather than enshittification, what Meta did to
Instagram could be considered "a consumer-welfare bonanza," Meta argued,
while dismissing "smoking gun" emails from Mark Zuckerberg discussing buying
Instagram to bury it as "legally irrelevant." Dismissing these as "a few
dated emails," Meta argued that "efforts to litigate Mr. Zuckerberg's state
of mind before the acquisition in 2012 are pointless." "What matters is what
Meta did," Meta argued, which was pump Instagram with resources that allowed
it "to 'thrive' -- adding many new features, attracting hundreds of millions
and then billions of users, and monetizing with great success." In the case
of WhatsApp, Meta argued that nobody thinks WhatsApp had any intention to
pivot to social media when the founders testified that their goal was to
never add social features, preferring to offer a simple, clean messaging app.
And Meta disputed any claim that it feared Google might buy WhatsApp as the
basis for creating a Facebook rival, arguing that "the sole Meta witness to
(supposedly) learn of Google's acquisition efforts testified that he did not
have that worry." In sum: A ruling in Meta's favor could prevent a breakup of
its apps, while a denial would push the trial toward a possible order to
divest Instagram and WhatsApp.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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