Meta Argues Enshittification Isn't Real

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Meta thinks there's no reason to carry on with its defense after the Federal Trade Commission closed its monopoly case, and the company has moved to end the trial early by claiming that the FTC utterly failed to prove its case. 'The FTC has no proof that Meta has monopoly power,' Meta's motion for judgment (PDF) filed Thursday said, 'and therefore the court should rule in favor of Meta.' According to Meta, the FTC failed to show evidence that 'the overall quality of Meta's apps has declined' or that the company shows too many ads to users. Meta says that's 'fatal' to the FTC's case that the company wielded monopoly power to pursue more ad revenue while degrading user experience over time (an Internet trend known as 'enshittification'). And on top of allegedly showing no evidence of 'ad load, privacy, integrity, and features' degradation on Meta apps, Meta argued there's no precedent for an antitrust claim rooted in this alleged harm.

'Meta knows of no case finding monopoly power based solely on a claimed degradation in product quality, and the FTC has cited none,' Meta argued. Meta has maintained throughout the trial that its users actually like seeing ads. In the company's recent motion, Meta argued that the FTC provided no insights into what 'the right number of ads' should be, 'let alone' provide proof that 'Meta showed more ads' than it would in a competitive market where users could easily switch services if ad load became overwhelming. Further, Meta argued that the FTC did not show evidence that users sharing friends-and-family content were shown more ads. Meta noted that it 'does not profit by showing more ads to users who do not click on them,' so it only shows more ads to users who click ads.

Meta also insisted that there's 'nothing but speculation' showing that Instagram or WhatsApp would have been better off or grown into rivals had Meta not acquired them. The company claimed that without Meta's resources, Instagram may have died off. Meta noted that Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom testified that his app was 'pretty broken and duct-taped' together, making it 'vulnerable to spam' before Meta bought it. Rather than enshittification, what Meta did to Instagram could be considered 'a consumer-welfare bonanza,' Meta argued, while dismissing 'smoking gun' emails from Mark Zuckerberg discussing buying Instagram to bury it as 'legally irrelevant.' Dismissing these as 'a few dated emails,' Meta argued that 'efforts to litigate Mr. Zuckerberg's state of mind before the acquisition in 2012 are pointless.'

'What matters is what Meta did,' Meta argued, which was pump Instagram with resources that allowed it 'to 'thrive' -- adding many new features, attracting hundreds of millions and then billions of users, and monetizing with great success.' In the case of WhatsApp, Meta argued that nobody thinks WhatsApp had any intention to pivot to social media when the founders testified that their goal was to never add social features, preferring to offer a simple, clean messaging app. And Meta disputed any claim that it feared Google might buy WhatsApp as the basis for creating a Facebook rival, arguing that 'the sole Meta witness to (supposedly) learn of Google's acquisition efforts testified that he did not have that worry.' In sum: A ruling in Meta's favor could prevent a breakup of its apps, while a denial would push the trial toward a possible order to divest Instagram and WhatsApp.

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