[surge]

This is what I don't get, the FTC is suing because the FTC allowed something to happen, when the platforms had even more dominance than they do now?

Kind of stinks of less than valid motivations based on the timing of bringing this up over a decade after the fact.

[ideashower]

At the time, Instagram had 80 million users, it had no monetization strategy and was profitless[1]. I suppose this made it seem less of an immediate competitive threat to Facebook's business model, especially with the presence of other smaller photo sharing platforms by Google etc.

In 2020, the Wall Street Journal reported that FTC officials in 2012 had concerns about the deal raising antitrust issues. However, they were apprehensive about potentially losing an antitrust case in court if they sued to block the deal.[2] If they would lose then on the merits of trying to enforce the Clayton Act, it would set a precedent that likely could not be undone.

[1] https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/facebook-instagram-deal-down-747m-...

[2] https://www.wsj.com/articles/tech-ceos-defend-operations-ahe...

[repeekad]

I remember hearing from friends at Facebook that an insider story was FB used VPN and in app IP address tracking to identify that instagram and whatsapp were hitting crazy growth metrics and that's how they knew they needed to buy them at all costs

[borski]

Something being predicted poorly, hypothetically, doesn’t mean you can’t rectify a past mistake, right?

Not specifically related to this case, necessarily, but if you let an acquisition go through and discover a decade later that it was, in fact, anticompetitive (and intentionally so), presumably you would still try to break up the resulting monopoly, even if you didn’t predict it would happen?

[YetAnotherNick]

Mistake shouldn't be based on outcome. If Instagram failed, would they still have the antitrust case?

[dylan604]

I guess theZuck didn't donate enough to the campaign

[eastbound]

The trial has to go through in all cases of bribing:

- If I’m the politician, then I need to keep the company on the edge until the end of the trial where I promise them to be acquitted;

- If I’m the CEO, I need the trial to go through and acquit me, because it guarantees me against future trials.

[wmf]

Wasn't the FTC completely rebooted in 2021?

[bertil]

That explains changes in priorities, but it does not make for great jurisprudence to have their unanimous decision revoked.

They could argue that the decision was made based on declarations that did not align with the private conversation that Zuckerberg had at the time, as those emails came out since.