The dismissal of the Federal Trade Commmission’s antitrust case against Meta Platforms sends a clear message that digital markets shift too quickly for regulators to prolong action against big tech companies and expect to win.
McCarter & English partner and former DOJ Antitrust Division attorney Robin Crauthers spoke with Corporate Counsel about the ruling and said, “The takeaways for the tech companies should be that the enforcers are not quite nimble enough to deal with the dynamic market that these digital platforms are operating in.” Despite Meta’s win, Robin noted important limitations to the ruling’s applicability. “The problem for the tech companies is that they are all global in nature, and this is just one jurisdiction, so it is pretty limited in how applicable it is going to be to these big, global companies,” she said.
Robin added that the decision could prove valuable to regulators if they extract the right lessons, noting, “What this decision does is it provides those enforcers with a framework to think about the facts on the ground, and whether or not this market is shifting so quickly that enforcement might not make sense.”