Meta asks court to dismiss FTC antitrust lawsuit

Meta, the parent company of the Facebook platform, was hit with a second antitrust lawsuit by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The FTC asked the court to prevent Meta from acquiring virtual reality software maker Within Unlimited transactions. On Thursday, Meta formally asked the court to dismiss the FTC lawsuit.

A spokesperson for Meta said, on the same day that the FTC's lawsuit against Meta had no basis. The plaintiff recently revised the complaint, but the new allegations also have no legal and factual basis and rely entirely on subjective guesses about the future of the fictitious real market.

The FTC amended the complaint this month with minor tweaks to the allegations, but the big ones haven't changed. As one of the two major antitrust enforcement agencies of the U.S. federal government, the FTC lawsuit focuses on the fitness software market for virtual reality devices, as well as the fitness software Supernatural under the Within company (currently only available for Meta's virtual reality devices). The FTC alleges that Meta's acquisition of Within would severely reduce competition and create an exclusive monopoly in the virtual reality fitness software market.

On the same day, Meta filed a judicial motion in court, stating that the FTC's antitrust allegations are self-contradictory and purely self-conjecture and that the FTC has no factual basis to prove whether the so-called virtual reality equipment fitness software market is in Behavior is still structurally oligopolistic.