Antitrust at the Agencies: Meta Analysis Edition
The memorandum and order in FTC v. Meta Platforms Inc. that U.S. District Court Judge James E. Boasberg filed Nov. 18, ruling in favor of Meta, has now been followed by a Dec. 2 revised order that contained fewer redactions.
The memorandum doesn’t exactly provide the law & economics analysis I would have produced, had anyone asked for it. But it is, nonetheless, a good decision by a thoughtful, generalist trial-court judge wrestling with both the evidence before him and relevant precedent. He got key things right, not least of which was the decision for the defendant.
A concise summary of the reasoning can be found on its second page:
In this fifth year of litigation, the Court held a lengthy bench trial, hearing from myriad witnesses throughout the industry, as well as from dueling sets of experts. As it has forecast in prior Opinions over the years, the FTC has an uphill battle to establish the contours of any separate PSN market and Defendant’s monopoly therein. The Court ultimately concludes that the agency has not carried its burden: Meta holds no monopoly in the relevant market. Judgment must therefore be entered in its favor.
Boasberg rejected the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) gerrymandered market definition, which was critical to the agency’s indirect evidence of monopoly power. He also rejected the FTC’s very limited–and frankly, not credible–proffer of direct evidence for monopoly power. Hence, he found that the FTC had failed to prove unlawful monopolization under Section 2 of the Sherman Act.