Wesley Hilliard
After Meta failed to properly redact court documents containing competitive assessments, Apple, Google, and Snap lawyers express frustration at the lack of care around the sensitive data.
Meta's antitrust case with the FTC continues, and it got off to a bad start Tuesday morning. Slides used in the hearing were made public, but Meta didn't redact them properly.
According to The Verge's Lauren Feiner, who attended the hearing in person, lawyers from Apple, Google, and Snap complained about the poor handling of their sensitive data. Apple's lawyer echoed Snap's claims of "egregious" disclosures, citing that Apple can't trust Meta will protect internal information going forward.
A full report from The Verge shared that Snap's attorney said Meta had a "cavalier approach and casual disregard" of the other companies swept into the case. They suggested that Meta would have treated the data with more care if it were its own.
There's been a tit-for-tat between Meta and Snap in this case in particular. Meta revealed data Snap considered confidential during opening statements, while Meta claims it didn't know anything it shared was considered confidential.
The data revealed about Apple pertains to iMessage, which shows iPhone users overwhelmingly use Messages over Instagram, Facebook Messenger, and other platforms. Out of all users polled, 88.39% said they used Messages versus 37.55% Facebook Messenger, for example.
Meta is arguing to the FTC that it does not have a monopoly on social media platforms and is using the existence of its competitors as an example. The FTC could pursue breaking Instagram and WhatsApp away from Meta if it rules against Meta in the case.
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Marko Zivkovic
Christine McKee
Andrew Orr
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7 Comments
Raise your hand if you’re surprised by this. Fakebook/Meta doesn’t care about protecting personal data or privacy, why should it care any more about corporate data?
My guess is that Meta let this shoddy redaction happen on purpose. It doesn't seem to hurt them as much as their competitors.
They should know what properly redacted documents are especially how much they are paying their legal team. And it's not their first time in a courtroom either.
This is just a reflection of the company's senior management's values and morals.
Unsurprising.
It seems to me that Facebook is being disingenuous about what is social media. Facebook, Threads, and Instagram are definitely social media. But iMessage and Facebook Messenger aren’t really considered social media.
Messages is really just a text messenger no different to ICQ. It doesn’t really have to social reach like Facebook, Threads, Instagram, X, Mastodon, BlueSky etc have. It’s largely just to friends.
I suppose you could argue that sending messages to friends is social but when people think of social media how many of the average punter thinks Messages?
Therefore, by saying Messages is being used more than Facebook Messenger is technically correct but not really relevant to this case of social media. But then look at the top four platforms for social media - Facebook, Instagram, X, Threads. How many of those are owned by Meta? And they’re trying to say they don’t have a monopoly on social media?