BREAKING: 48 States and U.S. Sue Facebook Seeking to End Illegal Monopoly

Forty-eight states and the United States have filed complaints in federal court alleging that Facebook has stifled competition to illegally maintain its social networking monopoly. EPIC has long urged the Federal Trade Commission to unwind Facebook's acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp. In 2014, EPIC and the Center for Digital Democracy warned the FTC that Facebook incorporates user data from companies it acquires, and that WhatsApp users objected to the acquisition. Today's complaint from state Attorneys General echoes this concern: "Facebook's conduct deprives users of product improvements and, as a result, users have suffered, and continue to suffer, reductions in the quality and variety of privacy options and content available to them." "We applaud the state Attorneys General for focusing on the ways Facebook's monopolistic behavior harmed users' privacy and reduced privacy-protective options in the market," Caitriona Fitzgerald, EPIC Policy Director said.