Meta wins FTC case over its Instagram and WhatsApp buys

Meta’s decade-old spending spree just got a judicial seal of approval. A U.S. federal judge said Tuesday that the company’s purchases of Instagram (in 2012) and WhatsApp (in 2014) didn’t stifle competition, killing the Federal Trade Commission’s attempts to unwind the deals years later.

The ruling is a decisive win for Meta, as Washington, D.C. district court Judge James Boasberg concluded the agency failed to prove Meta holds monopoly power in the “personal social networking” space today or that the two acquisitions illegally preserved such a monopoly.

The FTC argued that Meta followed a “buy or bury” playbook and that Instagram and WhatsApp should be spun off to restore competition, but Meta claimed throughout the trial that it competes across a broader attention economy — pointing to rival apps such as TikTok, YouTube, and X — and the court accepted the logic.

With Instagram and WhatsApp safe under one roof, Meta clears a major legal overhang just as it leans further into AI-powered features and messaging integration — and the FTC, although it can still appeal the ruling, has to remember how hard it remains to rewind tech mergers long after they’ve closed.