FTC Might Block Facebook From Merging Its Messaging Apps

As many of you know, Facebook owns several prominent social media platforms and messaging apps, such as Instagram and WhatsApp. For the most part, they have all managed to stay separate and somewhat independent of each other. However, earlier this year it was reported that Facebook could actually be planning on unifying them.

How exactly they were planning on doing that remains to be seen, but a report from The Wall Street Journal (paywall) is now claiming that the Federal Trade Commission could be looking to block that from happening. The report claims that the FTC is worried that the more Facebook’s products get integrated into each other, the more difficult it will be for the FTC or any law enforcement agency to break the company up for future potential antitrust cases.

Neither the FTC nor Facebook has commented on the report, but it does make sense. Facebook had previously confirmed their plans to unify their apps where according to the company’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg, he wanted to give their users a choice on how they want to reach their friends regardless of which platform they are using.

So far, we haven’t seen how Facebook plans on unifying their apps, but if the report is true, it looks like it could be a bumpy road ahead.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: Android, Apps, Facebook, Instagram, iOS, Legal, messenger, Whatsapp