Meta Platforms Inc. CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s lobbying campaign to settle a federal antitrust lawsuit against his social media empire has brought him to the White House and Mar-a-Lago to persuade President Donald Trump and his senior advisers.
Zuckerberg most recently made his case at the Oval Office on Wednesday as part of a companywide effort ahead of an April 14 Federal Trade Commission (FTC) trial that could force Meta to unwind its acquisitions of image-sharing app Instagram and the messaging platform WhatsApp. The New York Times and Wall Street Journal reported on Zuckerberg’s visit, his third to Washington, D.C., since Trump returned to office.
“We regularly meet with policymakers to discuss issues impacting competitiveness, national security and economic growth,” Meta spokesman Andy Stone said in a statement.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt declined to comment. An FTC spokesman wasn’t immediately available for comment.
Trump hasn’t decided whether the administration will settle with Meta, a person with direct knowledge of Trump’s thinking told the Journal. Adding to the intrigue, Zuck’s charm offensive has been anything but — at least one person told the Journal that Meta’s efforts are overly aggressive.
The FTC and 46 states sued Facebook’s parent company in late 2020, during Trump’s first term, accusing it of quashing competition by acquiring upstarts WhatsApp (for $19 billion in 2014) and Instagram ($1 billion in 2012) and preventing them from becoming full fledged businesses. The complaint claims Facebook “is illegally maintaining its personal social networking monopoly through a years-long course of anticompetitive conduct.”
A federal judge dismissed the lawsuits in 2021, but gave the FTC 30 days to file an amended lawsuit. The FTC came up with a more detailed case in August 2021 that accused the company of using its power to knee-cap rivals it considered a threat.
Meta has flatly denied gobbling up WhatsApp and Instagram to kill competition, and has said it invested heavily in further innovating both apps. The company insists it still faces a gauntlet of competition from Alphabet Inc.’s YouTube, Snap Inc., Apple Inc.’s iMessage and TikTok. The fate of the latter could be decided Saturday, the extended deadline for ByteDance to find an American buyer for TikTok or face a nationwide ban.
Zuckerberg’s campaign to resolve the 2020 lawsuit before it goes to trial follows an intensive effort to shore up a fractured relationship with Trump.
Last year, Meta donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund, and Zuckerberg (along with other tech leaders) appeared on stage during the president’s inaugural address. In January, Meta settled a lawsuit Trump brought against the company over its decision to suspend his accounts after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
