Sources: FTC may pursue Facebook antitrust case

Decision could continue recent actions against Big Tech

WASHINGTON — The Federal Trade Commission is moving closer to a decision about filing an antitrust lawsuit against Facebook for its market power in social networking, according to two people with knowledge of the agency’s talks.

The five members of the FTC met Thursday to discuss its investigation into Facebook and whether the company had bought smaller rivals to maintain a monopoly, the people said. They said three documents about Facebook had been prepared by the agency and circulated among its leaders: One addresses the company’s potential antitrust violations, another analyzes its economics, and a third assesses the risks of litigation.

No decision has been made on a case, the people said. The FTC commissioners must vote before any case is pursued.

Facebook and the FTC declined to comment.

Lawmakers and policymakers in Washington have ramped up antitrust actions against the largest technology companies, often in a bipartisan effort. On Tuesday, the Justice Department sued Google, accusing it of illegally maintaining its monopoly power in search and search advertising — the first such government action against a tech company in two decades. Two weeks ago, the House Judiciary Committee also recommended taking action to break up the Big Tech platforms, including Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Google.

The actions reflect growing frustration toward the companies, which total around $5 trillion in value and have transformed commerce, speech, media and advertising globally. That power has drawn the scrutiny of conservatives like President Donald Trump and liberals like Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.

Facebook has tangled with the FTC before, but mainly over privacy issues. The company reached a privacy settlement in 2011 with the agency. In 2018, the FTC opened an investigation into Facebook for violating that settlement, prompted by a report from The New York Times and The Observer of London on how the company allowed Cambridge Analytica, a British consulting firm to the Trump campaign, to harvest the personal information of its users. As a result, Facebook last year agreed to a record $5 billion settlement with the FTC on data privacy violations.

The antitrust investigation by the FTC has been far-reaching. The agency has collected thousands of internal documents from Facebook’s leaders. It has also interviewed people from the company’s rivals, such as Snap, which owns the Snapchat app, about Facebook’s dominance in social networking and its business practices.

In August, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, answered questions under oath as part of the inquiry.

The company has denied violations of antitrust laws. It points to competition in online social networks, including the fast rise of the Chinese-owned viral video app TikTok, as proof that it does not have a lock on the market.

With nearly 3 billion users across its apps and a market value of $792 billion, Facebook is unrivaled in size among social networking apps.