A protester calls for the dismantling of Facebook on November 21, 2020 in San Francisco.

-

Jeff Chiu / AP / SIPA

A titanic fight is announced.

The US Competition Commission (FTC) and prosecutors representing 48 states and territories in the country announced on Wednesday that they had filed a complaint against Facebook, which they accuse of abusing its dominant position and its well-filled coffers to oust the competition. .

The FTC, which had already imposed a fine of $ 5 billion on Facebook in 2019, calls in particular for the dismantling of the group, with a split of Instagram and WhatsApp, bought in 2012 and 2014 by Facebook.

The company has promised to respond in detail to the accusations, but recalls that the FTC had validated these redemptions.

FTC has prepared Q & As to address FAQs about the Facebook case: https://t.co/lcYi2smhQ9 11/12

- FTC (@FTC) December 9, 2020

"Crushed or hindered" competition

Such practices, the authorities argue, harm consumers by leaving them less choice and reducing the protection of their private data, and advertisers by leaving them few alternatives for placing their advertisements.

The authorities particularly blame Facebook for the takeovers of the Instagram application, in 2012 for $ 1 billion, and of WhatsApp messaging, in 2014 for $ 22 billion.

They also attack the conditions imposed by Facebook on software developers.

The FTC is therefore asking the courts to eventually force Facebook to resell Instagram and WhatsApp.

The agency also wants Mark Zuckerberg's group to stop forcing developers to accept certain conditions and ask him for his green light for any takeover operation.

Prosecutors for their part claim to be notified of any acquisition greater than $ 10 million that the social network would like to make.

Race for shared messaging

The world's leading social network has consistently dismissed monopoly accusations, arguing that consumers have a lot of choice over how to interact online.

The GAFAMs (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft) are generally in the crosshairs of the American authorities, who suspect them of taking advantage of their dominant position to crush their competitors.

Knowing that it was threatened, Facebook did everything to complicate a potential dismantling.

The company recently merged Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp - officially for more interoperability, but in practice, this could serve as an argument to explain that a dismantling would be too complicated and penalize Facebook too much.

Facebook is not the only Silicon Valley giant in the crosshairs of the authorities.

The Ministry of Justice and eleven states have thus launched a procedure against Google in mid-October, accusing the group of abusing a quasi-hegemony with its search engine.

Similar accusations were launched in the late 1990s against the computer group Microsoft.

After nearly three years of proceedings, the Ministry of Justice had however failed to dismantle the firm.

  • High Tech

  • Facebook

  • Competition