Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Meta and the US Federal Trade Commission are set to face off in federal court this month, in the first big test of whether the new Donald Trump-appointed antitrust regulator will continue to crack down on Big Tech. The looming trial, set for April 14, has seen Mark Zuckerberg meet the US President in recent days in an apparent last-minute lobbying attempt to avoid a court showdown.The trial will represent the most serious antitrust challenge in Meta\u2019s history, and could result in the $1.5tn tech giant being forced to unwind its acquisition of messaging platform WhatsApp and photo-sharing app Instagram. The case will also be the first signal of how new FTC chair Andrew Ferguson, who accuses Big Tech of encroaching on personal liberties, will approach an industry that is now aggressively courting the White House.\u00a0Meta appears to be exploring a settlement with the regulator in advance, thereby avoiding a trial that would have Zuckerberg, former chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg and rival leaders at TikTok, Snap and Google\u2019s YouTube take the witness stand.\u00a0Zuckerberg has attended regular meetings at the White House, including one on Wednesday, as part of an escalating push to curry favour with President Trump and seek favourable outcomes for Meta. The White House, Meta and the FTC all declined to comment on the meeting.Bill Kovacic, a former FTC chair, noted that it was more difficult to settle a case that proposed a structural remedy such as a break-up than one proposing money damages. But \u201cyou could take steps to give other firms data [and] knowledge about customers that you\u2019ve accumulated by ownership,\u201d he said. \u201cThe attractiveness of the situation depends on what Meta is offering.\u201dZuckerberg\u2019s efforts come as the new FTC chair has strongly hinted he will stick with the hard line on Big Tech that was ushered in by his predecessor Lina Khan. Ferguson is part of a new generation of populist Republicans embracing tough antitrust enforcement, particularly against Silicon Valley giants, accusing them of censoring conservative voices. He has pledged to enforce competition laws \u201cvigorously\u201d and has said that the \u201cTrump-Vance FTC will never back down from taking on Big Tech\u201d. The FTC chair on Wednesday criticised what he deems previously lax scrutiny of Big Tech, warning against the government not addressing the risk of monopolies. \u201cThen we wind up in a situation where we have Meta-Instagram,\u201d he said at an event held by start-up incubator Y Combinator.\u00a0While Silicon Valley had hoped that Trump\u2019s return to the White House would unlock dealmaking, Meta\u2019s case could be a powerful tool to discourage anti-competitive acquisitions. The trial comes more than four years after the FTC first sued then-Facebook over allegedly maintaining an illegal monopoly. The antitrust regulator during Trump\u2019s first presidency accused the group of quashing nascent competition by buying up rivals Instagram and WhatsApp, made in 2012 and 2014, for $1bn and $19bn respectively, and asked for the deals to be unwound. It has \u201csignificance both as it relates to these Meta acquisitions and to the broader principle of deterring dominant firms from gobbling up [budding rivals and employing] a Pac-Man defence\u201d, said Bill Baer, former head of the DoJ\u2019s antitrust division.The FTC alleged that Meta had a \u201csystemic strategy\u201d to stifle competition, including a \u201cbuy or bury\u201d approach of snapping up rivals or cutting off services to those that threatened its monopoly power.Meta is expected to argue that it boosted rather than buried its acquisitions, which had already been cleared by the FTC, and to point to the rapid growth of social media rivals such as TikTok, according to experts.\u00a0Multiple analysts noted that James Boasberg, the judge presiding over the case, had been sceptical about the FTC\u2019s arguments, initially dismissing a first complaint on the grounds that it was \u201clegally insufficient\u201d before accepting a refiled case in 2022.\u00a0Boasberg presiding over the case injects fresh drama into the high-profile proceedings, as Trump has previously clashed with him after the judge temporarily blocked a government measure that sought to accelerate deportations.\u201cThe FTC clearly has an uphill climb ahead, and the outcome of the case will be an important lesson in whether general animosity toward Big Tech can translate into persuasive cases under the demanding standards of\u201d US anti-monopoly law, said Maureen Ohlhausen, former acting FTC chair.Unwinding deals is generally complex, particularly if they closed more than a decade ago as in Meta\u2019s case, experts said.\u00a0The Meta trial follows the crackdown on Big Tech unleashed by progressive officials appointed by former President Joe Biden, including Khan, former FTC chair, and Jonathan Kanter, former head of the US Department of Justice\u2019s antitrust division.\u00a0They secured big wins including a US federal judge finding Google guilty of maintaining an illegal monopoly in online search last year and getting the Meta monopoly case to trial after an initial dismissal. But the FTC also suffered some setbacks, such as failing to stop Meta\u2019s acquisition of virtual reality business Within and Microsoft\u2019s purchase of video games company Activision Blizzard.If the trial goes ahead and Meta is found guilty, a second phase would determine potential remedies. Citing the Trump administration\u2019s recent attacks against perceived opponents, a former senior antitrust official said it was \u201chard not to worry about whether\u201d it would \u201cfollow the rule of law rather than rule by law\u201d.\u00a0\u201cThis is an opportunity for the FTC to have a reset,\u201d said Paul Swanson, who leads the antitrust and competition practice at law firm Holland & Hart. \u201cIf they continue to have big swings and big misses they lose some of that authority and power in the eyes of companies. They will benefit from a win here not just in this case, but in taking on other markets.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Meta and the US Federal Trade Commission are set to face off in federal court this month, in the first big test of whether the new Donald Trump-appointed antitrust regulator will continue to crack down on Big Tech. The looming trial, set for April<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-263027","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-tech"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263027\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}