U.S. and 48 States Say Facebook Illegally Crushed Competition, seek to unwind old mergers

[theRepublic]

noname2200 said:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/09/technology/facebook-antitrust-monopoly.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage

As someone who doesn't like Facebook or its practices in the least, I can't say I'm bothered by this action per se, and I think that for its own sake the US needs to be much more restricting when approving corporate mergers in general. It's interesting to want to unwind mergers that happened years ago though, and with the blessing of the relevant federal agencies.

Yeah, kind of makes the FTC look pointless, toothless, and incompetent.  Why approve these major mergers at all?  Not that much has changed since the Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions.  They were only 8 and 6 years ago.

Seems like there is always a lot of back and forth with approvals, even sometimes taking years, but I can't remember the last major deal that actually got shut down.