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 maintained 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........

© The Hill