Technology History | E. Barrett Prettyman Courthouse — The Case That Tried to Unwind the Instagram Deal

Eight years after the Federal Trade Commission cleared Facebook's purchase of Instagram, the same agency came to this building and asked a judge to undo it.

The FTC sued on 8 December 2020, joined by 46 states. Its argument was that Meta held a monopoly in personal social networking and had protected it by buying Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014 rather than competing with them.

The remedy sought was divestiture. Three companies where there was one.

Judge James Boasberg dismissed the original complaint in June 2021, finding that the agency had not established the market it claimed to be describing. An amended complaint filed that August survived, and the case then ground through discovery and motions for another three and a half years.

Trial opened on 14 April 2025 and ran six weeks as a bench trial, with no jury. Mark Zuckerberg testified for the defence; Kevin Systrom, who had sold Instagram in the first place, was called as a witness against the company that bought it.

Boasberg ruled for Meta on 18 November 2025. Whatever had been true in 2012, he held, the agency had to prove monopoly power in the present, and it had not: "Meta is not a monopolist insulated from competition."

What decided it was a shift in how people use the apps. The court weighed evidence that Americans now spend only about 17 per cent of their Facebook time and 7 per cent of their Instagram time on content from people they know, with the rest going to recommended video, the format TikTok established.

The judgment did not end the matter. The FTC filed notice of appeal on 20 January 2026, docketed in the D.C. Circuit as case number 26-5028, and on 29 May 2026 twenty-eight states and the District of Columbia filed a brief supporting it.

Their argument is about timing rather than facts: that a court should measure monopoly power when the complaint is filed, not when the verdict lands, or a company can outlast the case against it.

The appeal will be heard in this same building. The D.C. Circuit sits at 333 Constitution Avenue NW alongside the district court, so the ruling will be reviewed a few floors from where it was written.

Cover: photo by AgnosticPreachersKid, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.