Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Phoenix New Media Technology News Beijing time on September 13, Facebook parent company Meta said that in order to resist antitrust lawsuits initiated by the US federal government, it needs competitors to divulge some of the most confidential information.

So far, Meta has issued subpoenas to 132 companies asking them to provide documents, including Douyin's overseas version of TikTok, Snap and audio startup Clubhouse, and warned that another 100 companies might be asked for information. The subpoenas faced a series of legal challenges from Meta competitors, who accused Meta of mining their confidential data under the pretext of antitrust lawsuits.

The documents requested by Meta relate to some of the most important and sensitive factors involved in how competitors conduct their business, including how they acquire users, increase the size of their products and make money from features, according to court documents. Meta also wants information about competitors' marketing and sales strategies, quality indicators, contact information for the biggest advertisers, and details about attracting users from competitors.

Meta's search for information stems from an antitrust lawsuit filed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) against the company in 2020. FTC accused Meta of monopolizing the social networking market in part through the acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp. Meta refutes FTC's monopoly allegations, arguing that the social networking market is growing, with rising stars such as TikTok and Clubhouse as important examples. The trial of the lawsuit will not take place until 2024 at the earliest, but both sides are collecting evidence.

Kellie Lerner, an antitrust lawyer at Robbins Kaplan, was not involved in Meta's lawsuit, but she believes Meta's request is seeking "a lot of competitive and sensitive information". One company has been accused of anti-competitive behaviour, but now it is looking for very competitive and sensitive information. In my opinion, the breadth of pure evidence they are trying to obtain through discovery is unusual. " She said.

A number of companies oppose Snap is one of the companies most strongly opposed to Meta subpoenas. The company said in court documents that Meta's requirements were "too broad and an abuse of power". Snap is a key player in FTC's lawsuit and a company that Meta has previously tried to acquire. A federal judge in California will decide on Tuesday how much information Snap must hand over to help Meta defend Snap.

TikTok also complained that Meta had been seeking access to its "most confidential and highly sensitive business information". In addition, Pinterest, Microsoft LinkedIn and others have expressed concern about Meta's "highly intrusive" requirements as seeking to obtain their "most competitive and sensitive documents".

TikTok fears that Meta's lawyers may inadvertently divulge information that could be used by the company because the company has a history of copying the functions and strategies of competitors. Previously, Meta copied the "story" function of Snapchat and the short video mode of TikTok on Facebook and Instagram. Meta is currently considering changing the user's content information flow by mimicking TikTok.

In response, Meta responded in a court filing that it needed information from competitors to refute FTC's claim that it was a monopoly and did not face competition. " Meta competes fiercely with many companies to help people share, contact, communicate or just for entertainment, "said Christopher Sgro, a spokesman for Meta." as a reasonable step in preparing to defend FTC's lawsuit, we have issued subpoenas to competing companies or companies we believe have other information related to the FTC allegations. "

Other companies subpoenaed by Meta include dating app Tinder parent companies Match Group, Twitter, Reddit and Oracle. Meta's requirements are not limited to American social networking services. It also seeks information from chat app Line and Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten Group. Line, jointly owned by Softbank Corp. and Naver Corp, is the largest instant messaging service company in Japan, Taiwan and Thailand. Rakuten has Viber, an instant messaging app popular in India, Ukraine and Russia.

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.