Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook’s parent company Meta, will testify in a lawsuit filed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which argues that Meta’s acquisition of virtual reality (VR) content maker Within Unlimited should be blocked to prevent monopolization. The FTC believes that Meta’s acquisition of Within Unlimited, a maker of virtual reality (VR) content, should be blocked to prevent a monopoly.
In a court filing Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, the FTC listed 18 witnesses it plans to question, including Zuckerberg, Within Unlimited CEO Chris Milk and Meta Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth. They are also on the list of witnesses filed Friday by defendants Meta and Within Unlimited.
In addition to defending the Within Unlimited acquisition, Zuckerberg is expected to be asked about Meta’s VR business strategy and the company’s plans to support third-party developers, court documents show.
Meta agreed to acquire Within Unlimited in October 2021 for an unspecified amount, and the FTC filed suit in July of that year, arguing that Meta’s acquisition of Within Unlimited would “potentially create a monopoly in the VR fitness app market. The agency said the proposed deal would “substantially lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly in that market.
In court documents filed Friday, Meta argued that “neither the FTC’s conclusions nor the speculative and contradictory allegations stemming from the FTC’s conduct and organizational structure are compelling, let alone support any supposed hypothesis of a potential ‘oligopoly’ in the VR fitness app market. ‘ hypothesis.”
Under Zuckerberg’s leadership, Meta acquired headset maker Oculus VR in 2014 and began shifting its focus to VR, and the FTC noted in its lawsuit that since then, Meta’s VR headsets have been the cornerstone of its growth in VR. Driven by the Quest VR headset, Meta’s Quest Store has become the leading VR app platform in the United States, with more than 400 apps available for download.
The FTC also said Meta has acquired seven of the most successful VR technology development studios and now has one of the largest catalogs of VR content in the world. meta acquired Beat Games Studios, which gave it control of the popular app Beat Saber.
In its lawsuit against the Within Unlimited acquisition, the FTC cited a 2015 email from Zuckerberg to Facebook executives saying his vision for the “next wave of computing” was to control the apps and the platforms that distribute them. Last year, Zuckerberg announced he would build a metaverse designed to replace the Internet and bring virtual life together with real life.
