Three months ago, Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro publicly de-installed “WhatsApp” and instructed his followers to do the same following a presidential election international observers fear was stolen. Maduro also temporarily blocked Elon Musk’s ‘X’ platform to further seize control over the nations’ communications systems. WhatsApp and ‘X’ are often cited as critical tools for activists and dissidents to communicate in authoritarian regions.
Maduro de-installing the app looms large with the news that President Biden’s Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will go to trial against Meta for the crime of having acquired WhatsApp, as well as Instagram, in the first place. For bringing free communication to a dangerous world, Meta now finds itself in a courtroom facing meritless accusations that its business is an illegal monopoly. In reality, government bureaucrats, and only those bureaucrats, have arbitrarily deemed the company too large. In contemplating the FTC’s actions, ask if and when Meta’s users deemed it too large?
Clearly, it was never put up for our vote; because while historically the rationale for antitrust enforcement has emerged from concerns about “consumer welfare,” that hasn’t been the case with Meta. Eager to provide its customers with ever more reasons to use its platforms, Meta customers have voluntarily chosen to spend a lot of time with the platforms provided by Meta. One person aware of this is Venezuela’s Maduro, who now feels threatened by the fact that over half of Venezuela uses WhatsApp — and Meta offers industry-leading end-to-end encryption to safeguard its messages against authoritarian regimes like Maduro’s.
In light of the FTC’s lawsuit, one should acknowledge these critical security features are a direct result of the app being owned by a “big” technology company. In addition to enhancing WhatsApp’s security features, Meta grew its monthly active user base from the hundreds of millions to over two billion people worldwide. This build-out meant an incredible expansion of free communication services to Brazil, India, Indonesia, Philippines, Nigeria, Pakistan, Mexico, among many others, affording those even living in poverty the ability to communicate without cost and without fear.
WhatsApp couldn’t be the WhatsApp that it is today without Meta. Its stewardship made it the extraordinary humanitarian achievement in connectivity that it is.
Despite this success, Biden’s FTC will attempt to use the courts to strip Meta’s ownership. Ditto Instagram. Who they think should run WhatsApp instead – God only knows. But it’s safe to be skeptical that the FTC has someone better in mind to expand free, protected messaging services throughout the world.
More insulting than the notion they would, is the argument the FTC used for bringing this lawsuit in the first place – that Meta has a monopoly on social media. Ink feels wasted to point out the myriad of social media companies that Meta competes against, and how it has stumbled against formidable rising challengers like TikTok. This even further illustrates that future competition could spring up anywhere around the globe.
Social media aside, WhatsApp itself faces competition from other messaging services including Skype, Zoom, and Apple iMessages, to name but a few. One doesn’t need to be a ‘techie’ to see that competition in these spaces is so robust as to be obvious. The monopoly accusation against Meta is meritless and its ‘crime’ of connecting people is victimless. The reasonable among us expect courts to view it the same.
Indeed, one hopes the incoming Trump administration marks a departure from Biden-Harris antitrust enforcement. Elon Musk, who is set to lead a landmark commission to tackle bureaucracy, should help guide the administration as someone who has seen authoritarian crackdowns on social media firsthand.
Let’s leave attacking WhatsApp to the Maduros of the world.
