The FTC may issue an antitrust ban on Facebook as early as January next year

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According to foreign media reports, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) may seek a preliminary injunction against Facebook on antitrust grounds. After the news came out, Facebook's stock price fell 4%.

According to a person familiar with the matter, the FTC believes that the "interoperability plan" between Facebook's various products may be detrimental to normal market competition. As a result, they seek to prevent Facebook from advancing its plan to integrate its three instant messaging services.

Previously, Facebook had planned to integrate its three instant messaging applications, including Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram. For example, Messenger users will be able to chat with friends on WhatsApp.

Facebook said in a statement that it wants to "build the best messaging experience possible because people want messaging to be fast, simple, reliable and private. "

However, application integration of this scale soon attracted attention from the outside world regarding antitrust issues.

Facebook acquired Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014, and the apps have a combined 2.5 billion users. The two companies were originally intended to operate independently under the Facebook umbrella. But the main founders of Instagram and WhatsApp have left the company in the past two years, with reports citing internal power struggles and huge disagreements over their advertising strategies as the main reasons.

The New York Times wrote that part of the reason for the integration of WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram is to prevent users from migrating to rival messaging platforms, which is exactly what officials including the FTC are worried about.

It is worth noting that the issuance of this ban has not yet been finalized.

The five commissioners of the Federal Trade Commission need to vote to seek the ban, which is composed of three Republicans and two Democrats. A spokesman for the commission declined to comment, and Facebook did not respond to a request for comment.

In addition to the FTC, Facebook is currently facing an antitrust investigation jointly initiated by U.S. state attorneys general. The U.S. Department of Justice said it is conducting a broad review of the technology industry.

It is reported that the Department of Justice and the Trade Commission, both of which belong to the U.S. federal government, have reached a rough division of labor: the Department of Justice mainly investigates Google and Apple, and the Trade Commission mainly investigates Facebook and Amazon. However, the division of labor between the two agencies is not absolute, and there may be discrepancies in some cases.

In July this year, the U.S. Department of Justice officially announced that its antitrust department is launching an antitrust investigation into technology companies, mainly investigating whether "market-leading online platforms have reduced competition, stifled innovation, or otherwise harmed consumers." The Department of Justice will "consider the concerns expressed by consumers, businesses, and entrepreneurs about search engines, social media, and online retail services."

In the past, software stores owned by Google and Apple, as well as Amazon's online store, have raised questions about monopoly. For example, Apple and Google charged excessively high commissions on software sales and a share of in-app consumption. In addition, Amazon was accused of suppressing third-party sellers and even using other sellers' data.

In September, Google also announced that it was under an antitrust investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice, and the Department of Justice had asked Google to provide relevant documents.