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Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta just made a huge mistake.
Or more accurately, a bunch of huge mistakes, which have drawn the wrath of lawyers for Meta’s peers Apple, Google, and Snapchat.
The issue is that during the latest phase of its massive antitrust trial, Meta lawyers presented slides revealing information it held about other companies. Though technically redacted, third party details compiled by Meta were accessible by anyone with the file — because the redactions were easily reversible.
Luckily, the information revealed wasn’t exactly nuclear secrets — one slide notes hat iPhone users prefer Apple’s messaging app to Meta’s, per The Verge — but the other companies’ lawyers say that’s not the point: it’s that a company the size of Meta shouldn’t be treating sensitive court documents, nevermind the entire proceedings, with such utter disregard.
Snapchat’s lawyer slammed Meta’s “cavalier approach and casual disregard,” according to The Verge, and questioned if Meta “would have applied meaningful redactions if it were its own information that was at stake.” Counselors for Apple, meanwhile, implied they might not trust its internal documents with Meta going forward.
Meta has previously been caught trying to leverage user data to spy on rival platform Snapchat, a strategy the company called “Operation Ghostbusters.” It was also hit with a massive data breach back in 2019, leaking personal information from some 533 million Facebook users after attackers discovered a flaw in the platform’s internal security.
The company’s most recent privacy debacle comes in the middle of a landmark antitrust case filed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which argues that Meta has made a habit of buying out competitors like Instagram, WhatsApp, Threads, and Oculus rather than competing with them in earnest.
Among other things, the FTC is trying to prove that Meta’s attempted purchase of Snapchat — a bid Snap rejected back in 2013, to Zuckerberg’s dismay — represents a standard procedure for the social media giant.
In a recent PR disclosure, Meta raged that the “FTC’s weak case against Meta ignores reality,” arguing that the company’s social media rivals extend far beyond Snapchat, therefore its attempted purchase is no big deal.
“The evidence at trial will show what every 17-year-old in the world knows,” Meta’s report read, that “Instagram competes with TikTok (and YouTube and X and many other apps).”
Meta’s not alone in facing scrutiny for monopolistic practices.
A federal judge recently sided with the Justice Department in a suit alleging that Google was operating a web advertising monopoly, a judgment that could shake up the web in a major way. The FTC is likewise taking Amazon to task on antitrust grounds, though that trial could be delayed now that DOGE has cancelled the leases on some trade commission offices.
More on Meta: Zuckerberg Tells Court That Facebook Is No Longer About Connecting With Friends
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