Counsel for Meta Platforms today accused the Federal Trade Commission’s economic expert of having “preconceived” ideas against the tech platform and having persuaded the agency to bring a monopolization lawsuit against it while ignoring evidence of competition in the social media space.
Counsel for Meta Platforms today accused the Federal Trade Commission’s economic expert of having “preconceived” ideas against the tech platform and having persuaded the agency to bring a monopolization lawsuit against it while ignoring evidence of competition in the social media space.“Sitting here in May of 2025, and having seen all the evidence you've seen, are you really testifying that all the executives at Meta and the others who testified are wrong about what competition really involves" in the social media app space, asked Mark Hansen, attorney for the tech giant.
Hansen was continuing his cross-examination of professor Scott Hemphill, who was grilled yesterday about presentations he made to the FTC and other enforcers alongside Facebook cofounder-turned-critic Chris Hughes and Columbia University law professor and former White House advisor Tim Wu. Hansen has alleged that Hemphill was part of a “roadshow” in 2019 to convince enforcers to bring twin suits against Facebook in late 2020 (see here).
“My opinion is that Meta exercises monopoly power, and that continues to be true today,” Hemphill said in response to Hansen’s questioning. The expert witness said he was answering “an economic question of monopoly power.”
The Meta lawyer told Hemphill that he's given a summation tying in pieces of evidence to “support your preconceived ideas for this case that you persuaded the FTC to bring.”
Hansen had earlier quizzed the FTC lawyer about a hypothetical “but-for” world in which Meta wouldn't have monopoly power. In his expert report, Hemphill alleged Meta has monopolized the alleged personal social networking services market from 2011 to the present day.
The Meta lawyer zeroed in on an inconsistency where Hemphill stated that MySpace had more users on its personal social network users through the early 2000s.
“If MySpace had more users than Meta, maybe MySpace could have been a monopolist, but Meta could not have been a monopolist during that period, right?” Hansen asked.
Hemphill conceded that he had not done an analysis of that period but agreed that Facebook was smaller than MySpace, which is evidence against the possession of monopoly power during that period.
— FTC’s but-for world analysis —
The Meta lawyer then grilled Hemphill about the price and quality, asking what the price of Facebook and Instagram apps would be as charged to users in a “but-for world.” The expert acknowledged that the actual monetary price charged by users of Facebook and Instagram apps has always been zero dollars.
“Nowhere in your report do you give an opinion that this zero price is higher than the price that would prevail in the but-for world, correct?” Hansen asked.
Hemphill said he disagreed in part, arguing that one of the anticompetitive effects he identified is the incentive and likelihood in the but-for world that more competitive personal social networking apps would offer financial incentives.
The FTC expert was grilled about his report which stated the possibility of Facebook paying users in a but-for world as a “plausible outcome of competition.” Hemphill had said such a scenario merits further explication. Hansen pressed the expert on the fact that nowhere in his report does he say that Facebook pays its users “either in money or some kind of benefits to use the app”.
“No, I don't think there's an opinion like that, but it is likely that they would improve their offering in various ways, including this one,” Hemphill replied. “The opinion is that they would have an incentive to improve quality in various ways, and that as part of their improved competitive incentives, they would have an incentive to share some of these very large profits with users.”
Hansen kept up the line of questioning, asking whether “there isn't a single mobile app that you can think of in all your vast study…where the mobile app pays users to do nothing other than use the app.”
Hemphill said he was aware of deliberations but no actions as Hansen described.
— Hemphill meeting with FTC —
During questioning under redirect by FTC attorney Krisha Cerilli, the expert was asked to clarify allegations of him having “preconceived” ideas and an “axe to grind” against Meta in conversations he had had with the FTC about the case before he was retained as an expert. Cerilli asked him to clarify whether Hemphill had ever discussed the possibility of a case against Meta with the FTC in 2019.
Reading from a deposition transcript, Hemphill said he did have a meeting, along with Wu, with FTC staff about a possible investigation of Meta’s conduct with respect to Instagram and WhatsApp. The meeting was held as part of a task force on tech platforms and Hemphill received no compensation for making the presentation to the FTC, he said.
In response to Meta’s accusations that Hemphill failed to produce the presentation he made to the FTC about the tech giant, the expert said he was never asked to provide a copy to the company.
“Can you explain for the court what that presentation was and what that meeting was about?” Cerilli asked.
Hemphill said that he and Wu had been doing some academic writing about nascent competition and the different ways in which nascent competition might play out. As part of that work, the two academics became sufficiently familiar with Facebook's conduct “that it seemed like something for enforcers to pay attention to.”
The two academics put together a slide deck and talked with the FTC, the US Department of Justice, the New York attorney generals’ office as well as enforcers from California.
“There was a lot of interest in Meta’s conduct at the time… this seemed like the kind of thing that we've been worried about in our academic work,” Hemphill said. “Based on what we could see in the public domain – which is not that much – but enough to wonder that enforcement should take a closer look.”
Cerilli asked the FTC expert if he had formed a view that Meta’s acquisitions of Facebook and Instagram were definitely anticompetitive when he gave that presentation to antitrust enforcers in summer 2019. Hemphill replied in the negative and agreed with the FTC counsel that he was retained as an expert a “few years later” in early 2022.
Today, Meta told the court that it intends to file a motion for judgment against the FTC. US District Judge James Boasberg said he won't halt the trial to rule on any motion that Meta is welcome to make.
The FTC is expected to rest its case tomorrow.
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