is a senior policy reporter at The Verge, covering the intersection of Silicon Valley and Capitol Hill. She spent 5 years covering tech policy at CNBC, writing about antitrust, privacy, and content moderation reform.
After a federal judge ruled that Meta was not an illegal monopolist in a blow against the Federal Trade Commission, the agency issued what was in part a typical statement of disappointment. Another part of the statement was anything but: a political attack on the judge himself.
“The deck was always stacked against us with Judge [James] Boasberg, who is currently facing articles of impeachment,” FTC spokesperson Joe Simonson said in a statement after Boasberg released his decision in November. Simonson appeared to reference articles filed by a Republican lawmaker after Boasberg issued rulings that were unfavorable to GOP lawmakers and the Trump administration over a 2020 election probe and immigration policies.
In late January, the FTC announced it would appeal the Meta ruling. Legal experts tell The Verge its decision isn’t surprising or unreasonable. But the attack on Boasberg, they say, casts a shadow over the decision — making the motives for what might typically be a routine move less clear.
“You wonder how much there’s an element of irritation or annoyance just at Judge Boasberg himself here, and how much of it is an institutional decision that, ‘we’re going to show you,’” says Bill Kovacic, a former FTC chair and current George Washington University law professor. “This is a judge who the White House has criticized severely. Is there some element here of personal animus focused on this judge?”
Kovacic and others say there’s a sensible legal argument against the way Boasberg reviewed FTC v. Meta, though the agency hasn’t yet detailed its appeal strategy. The lawsuit, filed in 2020, argues Meta crushed competition by acquiring nascent rivals Instagram and WhatsApp in 2012 and 2014 respectively. Early on, however, Boasberg said the FTC needed to prove that Meta maintained or threatened to maintain an unlawful social networking monopoly as of the 2025 trial date. By that measure, he determined, the FTC’s case failed — largely because of TikTok.
TikTok exploded in popularity throughout the pandemic, and both Meta and YouTube invested heavily in short-form video to compete. Its popularity — which, according to internal documents, deeply concerned Meta — convinced Boasberg that the FTC had overstated Meta’s dominance in the current day. Boasberg admitted in his ruling that in response to earlier attempts by Meta to get him to dismiss the case, his orders “did not even mention the word ‘TikTok.’” But at the time of his 2025 ruling, “that app holds center stage as Meta’s fiercest rival.”
Boasberg’s decision to judge Meta’s monopoly by 2025 standards may become the FTC’s strongest basis to appeal its loss
Now, Boasberg’s decision to judge Meta’s monopoly by 2025 standards may become the FTC’s strongest basis to appeal its loss. Boasberg’s interpretation of the relevant timeframe arguably creates a “moving target,” says Vanderbilt law professor Rebecca Haw Allensworth. That could discourage the agency from bringing future enforcement actions if the market could shift while litigating the case. And the appeals court could — though it’s far from certain — determine it doesn’t make sense. “It just creates an additional risk of losing a trial if facts change on the ground underneath you,” she says.
The court of appeals judges won’t have to defer to Boasberg’s decision on how to interpret the law, as they would for his findings of fact. They could determine that Boasberg should have considered the relevant timeframe to be earlier, like the time at which the lawsuit was filed, when TikTok was growing rapidly but was far smaller. Viewed through that lens, the court might determine that Meta was a monopolist at the relevant time period — though again, it’s far from certain.
... continue reading