Why Is the U.S. Going So Hard on Meta and So Soft on TikTok? Have We Become Our Own Europeans?

April 14, 2025

The off-again, on-again Federal Trade Commission antitrust lawsuit against Meta was on again today before the judicial branch’s version of Zelig, Judge James Boasberg. FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson told the media that his lawyers were “raring to go” to break up Meta. But why?

The FTC is attempting to prove that Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp, which the agency itself approved over ten years ago, today makes Meta a monopoly. But a monopoly of what? More free distracted boyfriend memes or the woman yelling at the cat? Free clips of Gayle King waving down at the Earth?

The antitrust actions of the FTC and the White House appear increasingly uncoordinated, creating policy that is not only incoherent but utterly contradictory. On the one hand, Vice President Vance goes to Europe to warn that EU regulators seem to be aching for reasons to level death-penalty fines at American tech companies. In this he echoes the complaint that Europe cannot come up with a Meta, Apple, Google or Amazon of its own, but it is perfectly capable of devising laws like the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act that outlaw the basic business model of U.S. tech. The EU’s persecution of U.S. businesses cannot clear the way for European tech giants, because they largely don’t exist, but do clear the path for China and its tech champions.

Yet what we complain about in Europe is happening here. On the one hand, the Trump Administration ignores a law that plainly mandated that TikTok be sold by Jan. 19 in order to end Beijing’s continuous capture of the personal data of 135 million Americans. The administration extends this deadline, again, despite the national security concerns. And yet this administration also asserts that it is Meta that is the real threat that must be dismembered.

So the FTC continues with a gerrymandered case that asserts that Facebook’s and Instagram’s only competitors are SnapChat and MeWe (“the next-gen social network”). But TikTok and YouTube, the Godzilla and Mothra of social media, are ignored, even though they dwarf Meta’s Facebook and Instagram. Meta makes the point that when TikTok temporarily suspended its operation, American users turned to Instagram. This proves that the two platforms are, indeed, competitors. Also ignored are a host of other social networking platforms that also offer competition, not to mention Telegram and Signal as competitors for WhatsApp.

This is getting weird. Chairman Ferguson goes out of his way to join the Europeans by degrading a globally successful and innovative American company, while TikTok continues to get a free pass to exploit the data of more than one-third of Americans. Are we becoming our own Europeans?