U.S. District Judge James Boasberg dismissed the FTC’s high-profile antitrust monopoly case against Meta on November 18, 2025, ruling that the government failed to prove Meta illegally maintains a monopoly in social media through its ownership of Instagram and WhatsApp.
In a decisive 89-page opinion, the judge rejected the FTC’s demand to force Meta to divest the two apps, concluding that the agency could not show Meta currently possesses monopoly power in a properly defined market. Boasberg found that TikTok, YouTube, and other video-first platforms belong in the same competitive arena as Facebook and Instagram, and that Meta’s market share is shrinking rather than entrenched.
He described social media as a fast-moving industry where “apps surge and recede,” making it impossible for the FTC to draw stable market boundaries or demonstrate lasting dominance.
The ruling marks a major victory for Meta and a significant setback for the FTC’s aggressive campaign against Big Tech under Chair Lina Khan. The case, filed in 2020 and tried over six weeks in early 2025, centered on whether Meta’s 2012 purchase of Instagram ($1 billion) and 2014 acquisition of WhatsApp ($19 billion) violated Section 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act by neutralizing nascent rivals. Both deals had been cleared by the FTC itself at the time.
- The relevant market must include short-form video platforms like TikTok and YouTube Shorts; excluding them artificially inflated Meta’s share.
- Evidence showed Meta reacting to competition (e.g., spending $4 billion to launch Reels after TikTok’s rise) rather than insulating itself from it.
- The FTC’s claims of higher ad prices and content discrimination due to monopoly power were unsupported.
The company called the ruling a full vindication. The FTC expressed disappointment and is weighing an appeal to the D.C. Circuit.
The case is one of the most ambitious U.S. monopolization lawsuits against a tech giant in decades. Its dismissal, coming months after Google was found liable in separate search and ad-tech cases but spared major breakups, underscores the difficulty regulators face in proving—and remedying—monopoly power in rapidly evolving digital markets.