ftc

Amazon agrees to make canceling Prime easy, will refund customers $1.5B

Amazon, Amazon Prime, consumer harms, e-commerce, federal trade commission, ftc, Policy / Kris Guyer / September 25, 2025

Amazon must also post prominent disclosures describing how auto-renewals and cancellations work, as well as offer “an easy way for consumers to cancel Prime, using the same method that consumers used to sign up.”

“The process cannot be difficult, costly, or time-consuming,” the FTC said.

Moving forward, Amazon must also pay for “an independent, third-party supervisor to monitor Amazon’s compliance” with the distribution of customer refunds.

Celebrating the victory after a 3–0 vote approving the settlement, FTC chairman Andrew Ferguson described Amazon’s $2.5 billion payout as a “record-breaking, monumental win for the millions of Americans who are tired of deceptive subscriptions that feel impossible to cancel.”

The press release cited internal documents in which Amazon executives and employees “knowingly discussed” how hard it was to cancel Prime, exchanging messages admitting that “subscription driving is a bit of a shady world” and suggesting that forcing unwanted subscriptions was “an unspoken cancer.”

“The evidence showed that Amazon used sophisticated subscription traps designed to manipulate consumers into enrolling in Prime and then made it exceedingly hard for consumers to end their subscription,” Ferguson said. “Today, we are putting billions of dollars back into Americans’ pockets and making sure Amazon never does this again.”

Amazon did not immediately respond to Ars’ request to comment.

Amazon agrees to make canceling Prime easy, will refund customers $1.5B Read More »

Supreme Court lets Trump fire FTC Democrat despite 90-year-old precedent

ftc, Policy, president trump, Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, White House / Tim Belzer / September 23, 2025

The Supreme Court yesterday allowed President Trump to fire a Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission and will decide whether to overturn a 90-year-old precedent that says the president cannot fire an FTC commissioner without cause.

Trump fired Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter in March with a notice that said her “continued service on the FTC is inconsistent with my administration’s priorities.” Trump did so despite the 1935 ruling in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, in which the Supreme Court unanimously held that the president can only remove FTC commissioners for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.

An appeals court reinstated Slaughter three weeks ago, with judges finding that “the government has no likelihood of success on appeal given controlling and directly on point Supreme Court precedent.” But on September 8, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts granted a stay that temporarily blocked the lower-court ruling against Trump.

The Supreme Court majority followed that up yesterday by granting a longer-term stay that will keep Slaughter off the FTC at least until the court rules on the merits of the case. The case will be scheduled for arguments in the December 2025 session.

“The parties are directed to brief and argue the following questions: (1) Whether the statutory removal protections for members of the Federal Trade Commission violate the separation of powers and, if so, whether Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, 295 U. S. 602 (1935), should be overruled. (2) Whether a federal court may prevent a person’s removal from public office, either through relief at equity or at law,” the Supreme Court said.

Kagan: Trump given control of independent agencies

Justice Elena Kagan wrote a dissent that was joined by Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor. Kagan wrote that the majority is continuing to use the court’s emergency docket “to permit what our own precedent bars,” “transfer government authority from Congress to the President,” and thus “reshape the Nation’s separation of powers.”

Supreme Court lets Trump fire FTC Democrat despite 90-year-old precedent Read More »

Supreme Court Chief Justice lets Trump fire FTC Democrat, at least for now

ftc, Policy, Trump / Tim Belzer / September 8, 2025

1935 Supreme Court is key precedent

The key precedent in the case is Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, a 1935 ruling in which the Supreme Court unanimously held that the president can only remove FTC commissioners for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office. Trump’s termination notices to Slaughter and Bedoya said they were being fired simply because their presence on the commission “is inconsistent with my Administration’s priorities.”

The Trump administration argues that Humphrey’s Executor shouldn’t apply to the current version of the FTC because it exercises significant executive power. But the appeals court, in a 2-1 ruling, said “the present-day Commission exercises the same powers that the Court understood it to have in 1935 when Humphrey’s Executor was decided.”

“The government has no likelihood of success on appeal given controlling and directly on point Supreme Court precedent,” the panel majority said.

But while the government was found to have no likelihood of success in the DC Circuit appeals court, its chances are presumably much better in the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court previously stayed District Court decisions in cases involving Trump’s removal of Democrats from the National Labor Relations Board, the Merit Systems Protection Board, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

In a 2020 decision involving the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the court said in a footnote that its 1935 “conclusion that the FTC did not exercise executive power has not withstood the test of time.” If the Supreme Court ultimately rules in favor of Trump, it could throw out the Humphrey’s Executor ruling or clarify it in a way that makes it inapplicable to the FTC.

But Humphrey’s Executor is still a binding precedent, Slaughter’s opposition to the administrative stay said. “This Court should not grant an administrative stay where the court below simply ‘follow[ed] the case which directly controls,’ as it was required to do,” the Slaughter filing said.

Supreme Court Chief Justice lets Trump fire FTC Democrat, at least for now Read More »

FTC claims Gmail filtering Republican emails threatens “American freedoms”

ftc, Gmail, Google, Policy / Mike M. / August 29, 2025

Ferguson said that “similar concerns have resulted in ongoing litigation against Google in other settings” but did not mention that a judge rejected the Republican claims.

“Hearing from candidates and receiving information and messages from political parties is key to exercising fundamental American freedoms and our First Amendment rights,” Ferguson’s letter said. “Moreover, consumers expect that they will have the opportunity to hear from their own chosen candidates or political party. A consumer’s right to hear from candidates or parties, including solicitations for donations, is not diminished because that consumer’s political preferences may run counter to your company’s or your employees’ political preferences.”

Google: Gmail users marked RNC emails as spam

The RNC’s appeal of its court loss is still pending, with the case proceeding toward oral arguments. Google told the appeals court in April that “the Complaint’s own allegations make it obvious that Gmail presented a portion of RNC emails as spam because they appeared to be spam…. The most obvious reason for RNC emails being flagged as spam is that Gmail users were too frequently marking them as such.”

Google also said that “the RNC’s own allegations confirm that Google was helping the RNC, not scheming against it… The RNC acknowledges, for example, that Google worked with the RNC ‘[f]or nearly a year.’ Those efforts even included Google employees traveling to the RNC’s office to ‘give a training’ on ‘Email Best Practices.’ Less than two months after that training, the last alleged instance of the inboxing issue occurred.”

While the RNC “belittles those efforts as ‘excuses’ to cover Google’s tracks… the district court rightly found that judicial experience and common sense counsel otherwise,” Google said. The Google brief quoted from the District Judge’s ruling that said, “the fact that Google engaged with the RNC for nearly a year and made suggestions that improved email performance is inconsistent with a lack of good faith.”

FTC claims Gmail filtering Republican emails threatens “American freedoms” Read More »

Elon Musk’s “thermonuclear” Media Matters lawsuit may be fizzling out

ad boycott, censorship, Donald Trump, elon musk, federal trade commission, ftc, Policy, trump administration, Twitter, twitter ad boycott, X / Paul Patrick / August 19, 2025

Judge blocks FTC’s Media Matters probe as a likely First Amendment violation.

Media Matters for America (MMFA)—a nonprofit that Elon Musk accused of sparking a supposedly illegal ad boycott on X—won its bid to block a sweeping Federal Trade Commission (FTC) probe that appeared to have rushed to silence Musk’s foe without ever adequately explaining why the government needed to get involved.

In her opinion granting MMFA’s preliminary injunction, US District Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan—a Joe Biden appointee—agreed that the FTC’s probe was likely to be ruled as a retaliatory violation of the First Amendment.

Warning that the FTC’s targeting of reporters was particularly concerning, Sooknanan wrote that the “case presents a straightforward First Amendment violation,” where it’s reasonable to conclude that conservative FTC staffers were perhaps motivated to eliminate a media organization dedicated to correcting conservative misinformation online.

“It should alarm all Americans when the Government retaliates against individuals or organizations for engaging in constitutionally protected public debate,” Sooknanan wrote. “And that alarm should ring even louder when the Government retaliates against those engaged in newsgathering and reporting.”

FTC staff social posts may be evidence of retaliation

In 2023, Musk vowed to file a “thermonuclear” lawsuit because advertisers abandoned X after MMFA published a report showing that major brands’ ads had appeared next to pro-Nazi posts on X. Musk then tried to sue MMFA “all over the world,” Sooknanan wrote, while “seemingly at the behest of Steven Miller, the current White House Deputy Chief of Staff, the Missouri and Texas Attorneys General” joined Musk’s fight, starting their own probes.

But Musk’s “thermonuclear” attack—attempting to fight MMFA on as many fronts as possible—has appeared to be fizzling out. A federal district court preliminarily enjoined the “aggressive” global litigation strategy, and the same court issued the recent FTC ruling that also preliminarily enjoined the AG probes “as likely being retaliatory in violation of the First Amendment.”

The FTC under the Trump administration appeared to be the next line of offense, supporting Musk’s attack on MMFA. And Sooknanan said that FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson’s own comments in interviews, which characterized Media Matters and the FTC’s probe “in ideological terms,” seem to indicate “at a minimum that Chairman Ferguson saw the FTC’s investigation as having a partisan bent.”

A huge part of the problem for the FTC was social media comments posted before some senior FTC staffers were appointed by Ferguson. Those posts appeared to show the FTC growing increasingly partisan, perhaps pointedly hiring staffers who they knew would help take down groups like MMFA.

As examples, Sooknanan pointed to Joe Simonson, the FTC’s director of public affairs, who had posted that MMFA “employed a number of stupid and resentful Democrats who went to like American University and didn’t have the emotional stability to work as an assistant press aide for a House member.” And Jon Schwepp, Ferguson’s senior policy advisor, had claimed that Media Matters—which he branded as the “scum of the earth”—”wants to weaponize powerful institutions to censor conservatives.” And finally, Jake Denton, the FTC’s chief technology officer, had alleged that MMFA is “an organization devoted to pressuring companies into silencing conservative voices.”

Further, the timing of the FTC investigation—arriving “on the heels of other failed attempts to seek retribution”—seemed to suggest it was “motivated by retaliatory animus,” the judge said. The FTC’s “fast-moving” investigation suggests that Ferguson “was chomping at the bit to ‘take investigative steps in the new administration under President Trump’ to make ‘progressives’ like Media Matters ‘give up,'” Sooknanan wrote.

Musk’s fight continues in Texas, for now

Possibly most damning to the FTC case, Sooknanan suggested the FTC has never adequately explained the reason why it’s probing Media Matters. In the “Subject of Investigation” field, the FTC wrote only “see attached,” but the attachment was just a list of specific demands and directions to comply with those demands.

Eventually, the FTC offered “something resembling an explanation,” Sooknanan said. But their “ultimate explanation”—that Media Matters may have information related to a supposedly illegal coordinated campaign to game ad pricing, starve revenue, and censor conservative platforms—”does not inspire confidence that they acted in good faith,” Sooknanan said. The judge considered it problematic that the FTC never explained why it has reason to believe MMFA has the information it’s seeking. Or why its demand list went “well beyond the investigation’s purported scope,” including “a reporter’s resource materials,” financial records, and all documents submitted so far in Musk’s X lawsuit.

“It stands to reason,” Sooknanan wrote, that the FTC launched its probe “because it wanted to continue the years’ long pressure campaign against Media Matters by Mr. Musk and his political allies.”

In its defense, the FTC argued that all civil investigative demands are initially broad, insisting that MMFA would have had the opportunity to narrow the demands if things had proceeded without the lawsuit. But Sooknanan declined to “consider a hypothetical narrowed” demand list instead of “the actual demand issued to Media Matters,” while noting that the court was “troubled” by the FTC’s suggestion that “the federal Government routinely issues civil investigative demands it knows to be overbroad with the goal of later narrowing those demands presumably in exchange for compliance.”

“Perhaps the Defendants will establish otherwise later in these proceedings,” Sooknanan wrote. “But at this stage, the record certainly supports that inference,” that the FTC was politically motivated to back Musk’s fight.

As the FTC mulls a potential appeal, the only other major front of Musk’s fight with MMFA is the lawsuit that X Corp. filed in Texas. Musk allegedly expects more favorable treatment in the Texas court, and MMFA is currently pushing to transfer the case to California after previously arguing that Musk was venue shopping by filing the lawsuit in Texas, claiming that it should be “fatal” to his case.

Musk has so far kept the case in Texas, but risking a venue change could be enough to ultimately doom his “thermonuclear” attack on MMFA. To prevent that, X is arguing that it’s “hard to imagine” how changing the venue and starting over with a new judge two years into such complex litigation would best serve the “interests of justice.”

Media Matters, however, has “easily met” requirements to show that substantial damage has already been done—not just because MMFA has struggled financially and stopped reporting on X and the FTC—but because any loss of First Amendment freedoms “unquestionably constitutes irreparable injury.”

The FTC tried to claim that any reputational harm, financial harm, and self-censorship are “self-inflicted” wounds for MMFA. But the FTC did “not respond to the argument that the First Amendment injury itself is irreparable, thereby conceding it,” Sooknanan wrote. That likely weakens the FTC’s case in an appeal.

MMFA declined Ars’ request to comment. But despite the lawsuits reportedly plunging MMFA into a financial crisis, its president, Angelo Carusone, told The New York Times that “the court’s ruling demonstrates the importance of fighting over folding, which far too many are doing when confronted with intimidation from the Trump administration.”

“We will continue to stand up and fight for the First Amendment rights that protect every American,” Carusone said.

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

Elon Musk’s “thermonuclear” Media Matters lawsuit may be fizzling out Read More »

Delta’s AI spying to “jack up” prices must be banned, lawmakers say

AI, AI pricing, Amazon, Artificial Intelligence, Delta, equal employment, ftc, Kroger, Online Privacy, Policy, surveillance pricing / Rejus Almole / July 26, 2025

“There is no fare product Delta has ever used, is testing or plans to use that targets customers with individualized offers based on personal information or otherwise,” Delta said. “A variety of market forces drive the dynamic pricing model that’s been used in the global industry for decades, with new tech simply streamlining this process. Delta always complies with regulations around pricing and disclosures.”

Other companies “engaging in surveillance-based price setting” include giants like Amazon and Kroger, as well as a ride-sharing app that has been “charging a customer more when their phone battery is low.”

Public Citizen, a progressive consumer rights group that endorsed the bill, condemned the practice in the press release, urging Congress to pass the law and draw “a clear line in the sand: companies can offer discounts and fair wages—but not by spying on people.”

“Surveillance-based price gouging and wage setting are exploitative practices that deepen inequality and strip consumers and workers of dignity,” Public Citizen said.

AI pricing will cause “full-blown crisis”

In January, the Federal Trade Commission requested information from eight companies—including MasterCard, Revionics, Bloomreach, JPMorgan Chase, Task Software, PROS, Accenture, and McKinsey & Co—joining a “shadowy market” that provides AI pricing services. Those companies confirmed they’ve provided services to at least 250 companies “that sell goods or services ranging from grocery stores to apparel retailers,” lawmakers noted.

That inquiry led the FTC to conclude that “widespread adoption of this practice may fundamentally upend how consumers buy products and how companies compete.”

In the press release, the anti-monopoly watchdog, the American Economic Liberties Project, was counted among advocacy groups endorsing the Democrats’ bill. Their senior legal counsel, Lee Hepner, pointed out that “grocery prices have risen 26 percent since the pandemic-era explosion of online shopping,” and that’s “dovetailing with new technology designed to squeeze every last penny from consumers.”

Delta’s AI spying to “jack up” prices must be banned, lawmakers say Read More »

Court rules Trump broke US law when he fired Democratic FTC commissioner

ftc, Policy, Trump / Rejus Almole / July 19, 2025

“Without removal protections, that independence would be jeopardized… Accordingly, the Court held that the FTC Act’s for-cause removal protections were constitutional,” wrote AliKhan, who was appointed to the District Court by President Biden in 2023.

Judge: Facts almost identical to 1935 case

The Supreme Court reaffirmed its Humphrey’s Executor findings in cases decided in 2010 and 2020, AliKhan wrote. “Humphrey’s Executor remains good law today. Over the span of ninety years, the Supreme Court has declined to revisit or overrule it,” she wrote. Congress has likewise not disturbed FTC commissioners’ removal protection, and “thirteen Presidents have acquiesced to its vitality,” she wrote.

AliKhan said the still-binding precedent clearly supports Slaughter’s case against Trump. “The answer to the key substantive question in this case—whether a unanimous Supreme Court decision about the FTC Act’s removal protections applies to a suit about the FTC Act’s removal protections—seems patently obvious,” AliKhan wrote. “In arguing for a different result, Defendants ask this court to ignore the letter of Humphrey’s Executor and embrace the critiques from its detractors.”

The 1935 case and the present case are similar in multiple ways, the judge wrote. “Humphrey’s Executor involved the exact same provision of the FTC Act that Ms. Slaughter seeks to enforce here: the for-cause removal protection within 15 U.S.C. § 41 prohibiting any termination except for ‘inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office,'” she wrote.

The “facts almost identically mirror those of Humphrey’s Executor,” she continued. In both Roosevelt’s removal of Humphrey and Trump’s removal of Slaughter, the president cited disagreements in priorities and “did not purport to base the removal on inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance.”

Trump and fellow defendants assert that the current FTC is much different from the 1935 version of the body, saying it now “exercises significant executive power.” That includes investigating and prosecuting violations of federal law, administratively adjudicating claims itself, and issuing rules and regulations to prevent unfair business practices.

Court rules Trump broke US law when he fired Democratic FTC commissioner Read More »

Trump’s FTC may impose merger condition that forbids advertising boycotts

advertising boycott, elon musk x, ftc, Policy / Kris Guyer / June 14, 2025

FTC chair alleged “serious risk” from ad boycotts

After Musk’s purchase of Twitter, the social network lost advertisers for various reasons, including changes to content moderation and an incident in which Musk posted a favorable response to an antisemitic tweet and then told concerned advertisers to “go fuck yourself.”

FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson said at a conference in April that “the risk of an advertiser boycott is a pretty serious risk to the free exchange of ideas.”

“If advertisers get into a back room and agree, ‘We aren’t going to put our stuff next to this guy or woman or his or her ideas,’ that is a form of concerted refusal to deal,” Ferguson said. “The antitrust laws condemn concerted refusals to deal. Now, of course, because of the First Amendment, we don’t have a categorical antitrust prohibition on boycotts. When a boycott ceases to be economic for purposes of the antitrust laws and becomes purely First Amendment activity, the courts have not been super clear—[it’s] sort of a ‘we know it when we see it’ type of thing.”

The FTC website says that any individual company acting on its own may “refuse to do business with another firm, but an agreement among competitors not to do business with targeted individuals or businesses may be an illegal boycott, especially if the group of competitors working together has market power.” The examples given on the FTC webpage are mostly about price competition and do not address the widespread practice of companies choosing where to place advertising based on concerns about their brands.

We contacted the FTC about the merger review today and will update this article if it provides any comment.

X’s ad lawsuit

X’s lawsuit targets a World Federation of Advertisers initiative called the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), a now-defunct program that Omnicom and Interpublic participated in. X itself was part of the GARM initiative, which shut down after X filed the lawsuit. X alleged that the defendants conspired “to collectively withhold billions of dollars in advertising revenue.”

The World Federation of Advertisers said in a court filing last month that GARM was founded “to bring clarity and transparency to disparate definitions and understandings in advertising and brand safety in the context of social media. For example, certain advertisers did not want platforms to advertise their brands alongside content that could negatively impact their brands.”

Trump’s FTC may impose merger condition that forbids advertising boycotts Read More »

Trump bans sales of chip design software to China

AI, china, ftc, Policy, syndication, Trump / Paul Patrick / May 29, 2025

Johnson, who heads China Strategies Group, a risk consultancy, said that China had successfully leveraged its stranglehold on rare earths to bring the US to the negotiating table in Geneva, which “left the Trump administration’s China hawks eager to demonstrate their export control weapons still have purchase.”

While it accounts for a relatively small share of the overall semiconductor industry, EDA software allows chip designers and manufacturers to develop and test the next generation of chips, making it a critical part in the supply chain.

Synopsys, Cadence Design Systems, and Siemens EDA—part of Siemens Digital Industries Software, a subsidiary of Germany’s Siemens AG—account for about 80 percent of China’s EDA market. Synopsys and Cadence did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In fiscal year 2024, Synopsys reported almost $1 billion in China sales, roughly 16 percent of its revenue. Cadence said China accounted for $550 million or 12 percent of its revenue.

Synopsys shares fell 9.6 percent on Wednesday, while those of Cadence lost 10.7 percent.

Siemens said in a statement the EDA industry had been informed last Friday about new export controls. It said it had supported customers in China “for more than 150 years” and would “continue to work with our customers globally to mitigate the impact of these new restrictions while operating in compliance with applicable national export control regimes.”

In 2022, the Biden administration introduced restrictions on sales of the most sophisticated chip design software to China, but the companies continued to sell export control-compliant products to the country.

In his first term as president, Donald Trump banned China’s Huawei from using American EDA tools. Huawei is seen as an emerging competitor to Nvidia with its “Ascend” AI chips.

Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang recently warned that successive attempts by American administrations to hamstring China’s AI ecosystem with export controls had failed.

Last year Synopsys entered into an agreement to buy Ansys, a US simulation software company, for $35 billion. The deal still requires approval from Chinese regulators. Ansys shares fell 5.3 percent on Wednesday.

On Wednesday the US Federal Trade Commission announced that both companies would need to divest certain software tools to receive its approval for the deal.

The export restrictions have encouraged Chinese competitors, with three leading EDA companies—Empyrean Technology, Primarius, and Semitronix—significantly growing their market share in recent years.

Shares of Empyrean, Primarius, and Semitronix rose more than 10 percent in early trading in China on Thursday.

Trump bans sales of chip design software to China Read More »

Meta argues enshittification isn’t real in bid to toss FTC monopoly case

antitrust, facebook, federal trade commission, ftc, Instagram, mark zuckerberg, Meta, meta monopoly trial, Policy, Social Media, whatsapp / Mike M. / May 17, 2025

Further, Meta argued that the FTC did not show evidence that users sharing friends-and-family content were shown more ads. Meta noted that it “does not profit by showing more ads to users who do not click on them,” so it only shows more ads to users who click ads.

Meta also insisted that there’s “nothing but speculation” showing that Instagram or WhatsApp would have been better off or grown into rivals had Meta not acquired them.

The company claimed that without Meta’s resources, Instagram may have died off. Meta noted that Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom testified that his app was “pretty broken and duct-taped” together, making it “vulnerable to spam” before Meta bought it.

Rather than enshittification, what Meta did to Instagram could be considered “a consumer-welfare bonanza,” Meta argued, while dismissing “smoking gun” emails from Mark Zuckerberg discussing buying Instagram to bury it as “legally irrelevant.”

Dismissing these as “a few dated emails,” Meta argued that “efforts to litigate Mr. Zuckerberg’s state of mind before the acquisition in 2012 are pointless.”

“What matters is what Meta did,” Meta argued, which was pump Instagram with resources that allowed it “to ‘thrive’—adding many new features, attracting hundreds of millions and then billions of users, and monetizing with great success.”

In the case of WhatsApp, Meta argued that nobody thinks WhatsApp had any intention to pivot to social media when the founders testified that their goal was to never add social features, preferring to offer a simple, clean messaging app. And Meta disputed any claim that it feared Google might buy WhatsApp as the basis for creating a Facebook rival, arguing that “the sole Meta witness to (supposedly) learn of Google’s acquisition efforts testified that he did not have that worry.”

Meta argues enshittification isn’t real in bid to toss FTC monopoly case Read More »

At monopoly trial, Zuckerberg redefined social media as texting with friends

facebook, ftc, Instagram, Meta, meta monopoly trial, monopoly, Policy, Social Media, tiktok / Kris Guyer / April 18, 2025

“The magic of friends has fallen away”

Mark Zuckerberg played up TikTok rivalry at monopoly trial, but judge may not buy it.

The Meta monopoly trial has raised a question that Meta hopes the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) can’t effectively answer: How important is it to use social media to connect with friends and family today?

Connecting with friends was, of course, Facebook’s primary use case as it became the rare social network to hit 1 billion users—not by being acquired by a Big Tech company but based on the strength of its clean interface and the network effects that kept users locked in simply because all the important people in their life chose to be there.

According to the FTC, Meta took advantage of Facebook’s early popularity, and it has since bought out rivals and otherwise cornered the market on personal social networks. Only Snapchat and MeWe (a privacy-focused Facebook alternative) are competitors to Meta platforms, the FTC argues, and social networks like TikTok or YouTube aren’t interchangeable, because those aren’t destinations focused on connecting friends and family.

For Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, however, those early days of Facebook bringing old friends back together are apparently over. He took the stand this week to testify that the FTC’s market definition ignores the reality that Meta contends with today, where “the amount that people are sharing with friends on Facebook, especially, has been declining,” CNN reported.

“Even the amount of new friends that people add … I think has been declining,” Zuckerberg said, although he did not indicate how steep the decline is. “I don’t know the exact numbers,” Zuckerberg admitted. Meta’s former chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, also took the stand and reportedly testified that while she was at Meta, “friends and family sharing went way down over time . . . If you have a strategy of targeting friends and family, you’d have serious revenue issues.”

In particular, TikTok’s explosive popularity has shifted the dynamics of social media today, Zuckerberg suggested. For many users, “apps now serve primarily as discovery engines,” Zuckerberg testified, and social interactions increasingly come from sharing fun creator content in private messages, rather than through engaging with a friend or family member’s posts.

That’s why Meta added Reels, Zuckerberg testified, and, more recently, TikTok Shop-like functionality. To stay relevant, Meta had to make its platforms more like TikTok, investing heavily in its discovery algorithm, and even willing to irk loyal Instagram users by turning their perfectly curated square grids into rectangles, Wired noted in a piece probing Meta’s efforts to lure TikTok users to Instagram.

There was seemingly no bridge too far, because Zuckerberg said, “TikTok is still bigger than either Facebook or Instagram, and I don’t like it when our competitors do better than us.” And since Meta has no interest in buying TikTok, due to fears of basing business in China, Big Tech on Trial reported, Meta’s only choice was to TikTok-ify its apps to avoid a mass exodus after Facebook users started declining for the first time in 2022. Committing to this future, the next year, Meta doubled the amount of force-fed filler in Instagram feeds.

Right now, Meta is positioning TikTok as one of Meta’s biggest competitors, with Meta supposedly flagging it a “top priority” and “highly urgent” competitive threat as early as 2018, Zuckerberg said. Further, Zuckerberg testified that while TikTok’s popularity grew, Meta’s “growth slowed down dramatically,” TechCrunch reported. And perhaps most persuasively, when TikTok briefly went dark earlier this year, some TikTokers moved to Instagram, Meta argued, suggesting that some users consider the platforms interchangeable.

If Meta can convince the court that the FTC’s market definition is wrong and that TikTok is Meta’s biggest rival, then Meta’s market share drops below monopolist standards, “undercutting” the FTC’s case, Big Tech on Trial reported.

But are Facebook and Instagram substitutes for TikTok?

Although Meta paints the picture that TikTok users naturally gravitated to Instagram during the TikTok outage, it’s clear that Meta advertised heavily to move them in that direction. There was even a conspiracy theory that Meta had bought TikTok in the hours before TikTok went down, Wired reported, as users noticed Meta banners encouraging them to link their TikTok accounts to Meta platforms. However, even the reported Meta ad blitz seemingly didn’t sway that many TikTok users, as Sensor Tower data at the time apparently indicated that “Instagram and Facebook appeared to receive only a modest increase in daily active users and downloads” during the TikTok outage, Wired reported.

Perhaps a more interesting question that the court may entertain is not where TikTok users go when TikTok is down, but where Instagram or Facebook users turn if they no longer want to use those platforms. If the FTC can argue that people seeking a destination to connect with friends or family wouldn’t substitute TikTok for that purpose, their market definition might fly.

Kenneth Dintzer, a partner at Crowell & Moring and the former lead attorney in the DOJ’s winning Google search monopoly case, told Ars that the chief judge in the case, James Boasberg, made clear at summary judgment that acknowledging Meta’s rivalry with TikTok “doesn’t really answer the question about friends and family.”

So even though Zuckerberg was “pretty persuasive,” his testimony on TikTok may not move the judge much. However, there was one exchange at the trial where Boasberg asked, “How much does it matter if friends are on a particular platform, if friends can share outside of it?” Zuckerberg praised this as a “good question” and “explained that it doesn’t matter much because people can fluidly share across platforms, using each one for its value as a ‘discovery engine,'” Big Tech on Trial reported.

Dintzer noted that Zuckerberg seemed to attempt to float a different theory explaining why TikTok was a valid rival—curiously attempting to redefine “social media” to overcome the judge’s skepticism in considering TikTok a true Meta rival.

Zuckerberg’s theory, Dintzer said, suggests that “if I open up something on TikTok or on YouTube, and I send it to a friend, that is social media.”

But that broad definition could be problematic, since it would suggest that all texting and messaging are social media, Dintzer said.

“That didn’t seem particularly persuasive,” Dintzer said. Although that kind of social sharing is “certainly something that people enjoy,” it still “doesn’t seem to be quite the same thing as posting something on Facebook for your friends and family.”

Another wrinkle that may scramble Meta’s defense is that Meta has publicly declared that its priority is to bring back “OG Facebook” and refresh how friends and family connect on its platforms. Just today, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri announced a new Instagram feature called “blend” that strives to connect friends and family through sharing access to their unique discovery algorithms.

Those initiatives seem like a strategy that fully relies on Meta’s core use case of connecting friends and family (and network effects that Zuckerberg downplayed) to propel engagement that could spike revenue. However, that goal could invite scrutiny, perhaps signaling to the court that Meta still benefits from the alleged monopoly in personal social networking and will only continue locking in users seeking to connect with friends and family.

“The magic of friends has fallen away,” Meta’s blog said, which, despite seeming at odds, could serve as both a tagline for its new “Friends” tab on Facebook and the headline of its defense so far in the monopoly trial.

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

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FTC now has three Republicans and no Democrats instead of the typical 3-2 split

ftc, Policy, Trump / Rejus Almole / April 12, 2025

After declaring the FTC to be under White House control, Trump fired both Democratic members despite a US law and Supreme Court precedent stating that the president cannot fire commissioners without good cause.

House Commerce Committee leaders said the all-Republican FTC will end the “partisan mismanagement” allegedly seen under the Biden-era FTC and then-Chair Lina Khan. “In the last administration, the FTC abandoned its rich bipartisan tradition and historical mission, in favor of a radical agenda and partisan mismanagement,” said a statement issued by Reps. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky) and Gus Bilirakis (R-Fla.). “The Commission needs to return to protecting Americans from bad actors and preserving competition in the marketplace.”

Consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge thanked Senate Democrats for voting against Meador. “In order for the FTC to be effective, it needs to have five independent commissioners doing the work,” said Sara Collins, the group’s director of government affairs. “By voting ‘no’ on this confirmation, these senators have shown that it is still important to prioritize protecting consumers and supporting a healthier marketplace over turning a blind eye to President Trump’s unlawful termination of Democratic Commissioners Slaughter and Bedoya.”

Democrats sue Trump

The two Democrats are challenging the firings in a lawsuit that said “it is bedrock, binding precedent that a President cannot remove an FTC Commissioner without cause.” Trump “purported to terminate Plaintiffs as FTC Commissioners, not because they were inefficient, neglectful of their duties, or engaged in malfeasance, but simply because their ‘continued service on the FTC is’ supposedly ‘inconsistent with [his] Administration’s priorities,'” the lawsuit said.

US law says an FTC commissioner “may be removed by the President for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” A 1935 Supreme Court ruling said that “Congress intended to restrict the power of removal to one or more of those causes.”

Slaughter and Bedoya sued Trump in US District Court for the District of Columbia and asked the court to declare “the President’s purported termination of Plaintiffs Slaughter and Bedoya unlawful and that Plaintiffs Slaughter and Bedoya are Commissioners of the Federal Trade Commission.”

FTC now has three Republicans and no Democrats instead of the typical 3-2 split Read More »