Is Facebook a monopolist?

AT LAST, IT’SFTCFTC happening. Or so big tech’s critics thought. President Joe Biden has named one of their own, Lina Khan, to head the Federal Trade Commission (). A Congressional committee has approved six bills to rein in Alphabet, Amazon, Apple and Facebook. Then, on June 28th, a federal judge provided a heavy dose of realism by summarily dismissing two antitrust cases against Facebook.The unexpected ruling, which sent Facebook’s market value past $1trn, was a reminder that, in America, the swelling “techlash” may yield meagre results (see chart 1). Judge James Boasberg—appointed by Mr Biden’s former boss, Barack Obama—threw out one of the cases, brought by 46 states, on a technicality. The complaint, which accused Facebook of acquiring nascent rivals, such as Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014, to cement its social-networking dominance, was deemed too tardy. More profoundly, the judge found the second case, lodged by the , “legally insufficient”. “It is almost as if the agency expects the Court to simply nod to the conventional wisdom that Facebook is a monopolist [in social-networking],” he wrote.