WASHINGTON – The Federal Trade Commission and more than 40 states on Wednesday accused Facebook of becoming a social media monopoly by illegally buying its rivals for squash competition, and said deals that turn the social network into a behemoth should not go unchecked. Controllers who have been investigating the company for more than 18 months have, in separate cases, removed Facebook’s acquisition, particularly $ 1 billion in Instagram in 2012 and $ 19 billion two years after WhatsApp, one day challenging the company’s dominance. Those deals have become popular with Instagram and WhatsApp, which give Facebook control over the three most popular social media and messaging apps in the world. These apps helped Facebook catapult 16 years ago into an internet powerhouse worth over $ 800 billion in a college dormitory. Prosecutors have called for Facebook to break with Instagram and WhatsApp and for new restrictions on future deals. The regulators will impose the most severe fines they can claim. “For almost a decade, Facebook has been using its dominance and monopoly power to crush small rivals and snatch competition, all at the expense of everyday users,” said Attorney General Lydia James, who led the company’s diversified investigation in parallel with the federal agency. The lawsuits, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, underscore the growing bipartisan and international tsunami against Big Tech. Lawmakers and regulators are zeroing in and maintaining the grip they maintain on Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple business, electronics, social networking, search and online advertising, transforming the country’s economy. President Trump has repeatedly argued that technology companies have more power and influence than President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s associates are making similar complaints. Investigations have already led to a lawsuit against Google, which was brought in by the judiciary two months ago, accusing the search company of illegally defending a monopoly. Lawyers in that case have stopped demanding that Google break any parts of its business. At least one lawsuit against Google is expected by Republican and Democrats later this year. In Europe, regulators are proposing tougher laws against industry and imposing billions of dollars in fines for violating competition laws. The lawsuits against Facebook are expected to start a long legal battle. The company has long denied any illegal reactionary behavior and is expected to use its deep money for its own defense. Some of the big hopeless cases are centered around connections that were approved many years ago. The FTC signed Facebook’s deals for Instagram and WhatsApp during the Obama administration. If the lawyers win, the lawsuits could remake the company, which has only experienced unrestrained growth. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, described the split as an “existential” threat. Shares of the company fell 2 percent to $ 277.70 after the lawsuits were announced. This case is widely seen as a measure of future connectivity in the field of technology, which continues to grow during epidemics. Last month, Facebook announced it was buying a customer relationship management startup customer for $ 1 billion. Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but in the past it has argued that the market for social media is competitive. The company says the skyrocketing growth of the Chinese short video sharing app Dictok and the new development of Parlor, a social media company popular among conservatives, show that Facebook has no lock on the social network. The lawsuit against Facebook shows how important the company is to how Americans connect with each other. Its named product has grown to hundreds of millions of users in just a few short years. But around 2011, the landscape began to change as mobile phones came with efficient cameras, and posting photos on social networks became increasingly popular. This led to a competitive threat to Facebook: Instagram. The photo-sharing site, founded in 2010, saw initial explosive growth as a company that owns smartphones, and the perfect time for mass adoption came as consumer waves moved away from desktop devices and into mobile computers in their pockets. The FTC said Mr. It found that Zuckerberg “recognized Instagram as a vibrant and innovative personal social network and an existential threat to Facebook’s monopoly power.” But instead of constantly competing with its own photo-sharing project, Mr. Zuckerberg chose to buy its rival. The company repeated this practice through WhatsApp, which was a potential competitor to its own messaging system. The company also alleges that Facebook maintained its dominance by threatening to block third-party software developers from plugging into the social network if they made competing products. “Our mission is to oversee the unreliable enforcement in the agency,” said Ian Connor, who is recovering from Facebook’s unpredictable behavior and thus allowing innovation and free competition to thrive. “In June 2019, the FTC and the judiciary began investigations to find unexpected practices on technology platforms on Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google. After a long time, states began to investigate cases involving Google and Facebook, two companies that clearly dominate their search markets, and social media. And online advertising, which took shape faster than other companies.Google was subjected to a hopeless investigation, which closed on the FTC in 2013 without a lawsuit but generated information.Facebook’s lawsuit quickly linked to its previous links, which regulators were able to investigate due to a previous investigation into those acquisitions. , Said some close to the inquiries.The state case was signed by the attorney general from 46 states and in the districts of Colombia and Guam, not including Georgia, South Dakota, Alabama and South Carolina.
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