TikTok’s viral video platform and Apple’s popular iMessage product do not embody the same designs and social elements common to personal social networking services like Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat, according to a US Federal Trade Commission expert’s trial testimony today on the dynamics of human-computer interaction.
TikTok’s ubiquitous video platform and Apple’s popular iMessage product do not embody the same designs and social milieu common to personal social networking services like Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat, according to a US Federal Trade Commission expert’s trial testimony today on the dynamics of human-computer interaction.Professor Cliff Lampe described himself as a novice when it comes to testifying as an expert witness before recounting his multidisciplinary academic research on information systems, experience advising government agencies and consultations with research teams at private social media companies including Twitter, Nextdoor, Wikipedia and Meta.
During testimony that consumed most of today’s proceedings, the FTC's expert touched on claims that users don’t care about privacy and focused extensively on the characteristics which he claimed distinguish “personal social networking” hubs from “other online platforms that do not the provide the same experience.”
Lampe said he offered no opinions on a laundry list of antitrust-related topics linked to defining relevant markets. But his assertions about how people connect with one another online, he said, speak directly to that question and go to the heart of the agency’s case.
That case seeks to spin off Instagram and WhatsApp by proving Meta harmed competition and consumers while illegally maintaining a monopoly over the market for personal social networking services (see here).
Lampe’s research, he said, determined that Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat fit his definition of a personal social networking site, and the “distinct experience” and core use cases of those platforms distinguishes them from other companies like TikTok, YouTube, X, Reddit, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Nextdoor.
The former group distinguished itself from the latter through platform experiences revolving around “design, motivations and norms” that “enable mass personal, low-cost maintenance of relationships with broad networks of real-life personal connections” — a definition of personal social networking that the parties explored at length in court today.
Lampe’s presentation also included two “exemplar” deep dives into TikTok and iMessage, which he said reflect the strong distinctions between personal social networking sites, “other” social media, and instant messaging platforms, respectively.
iMessage’s “narrower connection framework” and focus on private, direct communication set it apart from other social media platforms, while former TikTok Chief Operating Officer Victoria Pappas described that platform’s default experience as “very distinct” from a social network in deposition testimony.
During a cross-examination that involved at least a half-dozen attempts at impeachment and several instances where Meta attorney Daniel Dorris exhibited visible signs of frustration, Lampe repeatedly returned to a handful of fundamental principles while avoiding direct engagement with the thrust of Dorris’ questions about quantitative data, user behavior and individual platform features.
Among those principles: looking at how users spend time on platforms can be “misleading;” the importance of a holistic view toward the motivations, norms and designs surrounding human interactions with platforms; and that “technology does not change what it means to be human.”
Lampe also defended his methods and sources, which rely heavily on qualitative data and include a trio of studies that surveyed small sample sizes of social media users from different countries about their online habits and the motivations behind them.
At the end of Meta’s cross-examination, US District Judge James Boasberg’s first question addressed the expert witness’s claim that Snapchat had started as a messaging service but morphed into a personal social networking site after adding a new stories feature and “considerable effort” to create new norms on its platform.
“When does an app cross the line into personal social networking territory if it's not based on user behavior, in large part?” Boasberg asked.
Lampe responded that it's hard to define such a “tipping point,” describing user behavior as one indicator that can be combined with other factors, like platform design decisions that shape such behavior.
“How do you determine user behavior without data?” Boasberg continued.
Lampe cited survey measurements, interview studies and other primarily qualitative methods.
“Without the context of why ... those behaviors can be easy to misinterpret,” he said.
Instead of looking at data on how users spend time on apps, Lampe focused on how sites publicly present themselves to users, design elements that shape user behavior and testimony from industry participants about the core use cases for their own products.
In the same way that the design of roadways shapes social norms and human behavior, the “default experience” on online platforms is “very formative” for digital platforms and one they rarely move away from, Lampe testified.
The so-called “power of defaults” has been a major topic in the US Department of Justice’s winning monopolization case against Google, which kicked off its remedies phase in the District of Columbia this week alongside the FTC’s trial (see here and here).
— Snapchat v. Signal —
One principal argument Lampe returned while being peppered by questions from Dorris was that a social networking site comes into being not through “the addition of a feature here or there,” but rather “a cohesive effort.”
The encrypted messaging app Signal has also introduced a “stories” feature, but it's not possible to “look at a technology or feature and work backwards.”
Dorris pressed Lampe about the “actual data” he relied on to determine that Snapchat’s stories feature made it a personal social networking service but Signal’s did not.
The FTC's expert responded that he looked at a “broad variety of evidence” including public documents, academic literature and how the sites present themselves to users.
Lampe told Dorris he didn’t look at the existence of a feature “in isolation,” and the “amount of use of any particular feature on a platform isn’t something I’m looking at.”
“How likely are norms to change?” Boasberg asked Lampe. The judge disclaimed any meaningful engagement with social media apps, but he questioned whether norms aren’t “changing all the time” by contrasting his personal communication habits with those of younger people who tend to leave fewer voicemails or text more often.
“Those were not overnight changes,” Lampe countered, pushing back further after Boasberg followed up to suggest that user motivations are also subject to change across different social media platforms.
Boasberg summed up the “debate” between the parties over market definition as the FTC putting forward a “difference in kind” between online digital platforms while Meta focuses instead on “a difference in degree.”
The judge then asked why differing uses on platforms aren't differences in degree.
Lampe responded that his background in computer science meant he could not speak to that question, but asserted a difference in kind “really exists” and that there is a strong preference in how people are motivated to use different types of platforms.
Lampe also cited the failure of TikTok to get traction with users who had been prompted to use the app’s “contact importer” feature to construct a social graph through uploading their phone’s list of contacts into the app.
“The existence of a feature doesn’t necessarily lead to the social outcome you’re after,” he said.
— TikTok v. Facebook; Instagram v. YouTube —
During his testimony, Lampe criticized the utility of a table prepared by a Meta expert witness that outlined the presence of Facebook’s most popular features on other apps.
Two reasons the table was not informative, according to Lampe, were a problem with “technological determinism” and that the systems described were at too high a level to be meaningful.
Microsoft Excel and Word have search functions, he said. “That doesn’t make them social applications in any way, shape or form.”
At a different point in his testimony, Lampe contrasted YouTube’s addition of a “stories” feature in 2018 with that of Instagram stories circa 2023.
"Both were called stories,” Lampe said. But they were “designed in such incredibly different ways that they lead to incredibly different experiences.”
The FTC's expert also claimed that the same piece of content can be “experienced in very different ways by users based on the platform,” demonstrating how the same music video for Michael Jackson’s song “Thriller” could be engaged with actively on Instagram and passively on TikTok.
The “default experience” on TikTok, Lampe said, is “passive consumption of entertainment media.”
Please e-mail editors@mlex.com to contact the editorial staff regarding this story, or to submit the names of lawyers and advisers.