The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) may use an introductory order to pause Facebook’s ongoing efforts toward attaining a stronger integration between its messaging apps: Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp.
According to a report, the reason behind a possible order has become stronger over the past few months amidst fears that Facebook’s integration campaign may make it tough, if not impracticable, to break up the company in any future antitrust action.
The FTC may invoke the “interoperability” rules as a basis for an order and to highlight the potentially damaging impact of Facebook’s integration push on the ability of other industry players to compete, according to an internal source.
It is important to note that this ruling by the FTC will need a favourable majority vote. Consequently, in order to impose a law on Facebook, the vote will have to be carried by at least 3 FTC members.
As a refresher, Facebook first announced its plans for a tighter stitch between its apps earlier this year. The social media giant’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a blog post: “People want to be able to choose which service they use to communicate with people. We want to give people a choice so they can reach their friends across these networks from whichever app they prefer.”
