FTC appeals Meta antitrust ruling with a wooden racket

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) could take a lesson in humility from Björn Borg, one of the true greats of tennis’s Open Era. By appealing its November 2025 loss in the Meta antitrust case, the FTC is attempting a comeback reminiscent of Borg’s ill-fated 1991 return to the court after a decade-long hiatus.

Björn Borg was a defining force in tennis between 1974 and 1981, capturing five consecutive Wimbledon titles and six French Open crowns while spending 109 weeks as the world’s top-ranked player. Following a premature retirement in his mid-20s, he returned in 1991 to the Monte Carlo Open, oddly wielding the same wooden racket of his heyday.

By then, tennis had undergone a technological revolution. The professional circuit had moved to the power of modern graphite rackets. Borg’s game was left behind. As tennis journalist and author Tim Adams put it,

Time, in sport, moves extremely quickly. Borg, stubborn as ever, appeared to want to ignore that fact entirely. He made his return with his antique small-headed wooden racket – when all around him were wielding great graphite clubs . . . . He lost to Jordi Arrese, a journeyman Spaniard, in straight sets. A couple of other similar defeats and the cringe-inducing return was over. 

Like sport, technology moves extremely quickly, a reality the FTC seems intent on ignoring as it pursues an appeal against the Meta ruling.

The FTC relied on a dated and narrow market definition of “personal social networking” in its retrospective challenge to Facebook’s 2012 purchase of Instagram and its 2014 purchase of WhatsApp. By the time the case made it to trial, the social media landscape had changed dramatically. The market had moved beyond updates from “friends and family” to one driven by global creators and algorithmic discovery.

The district court ultimately concluded, contrary to the FTC’s contentions, that both YouTube and TikTok belong in the relevant market, meaning Meta did not possess the requisite monopoly power. Consumers do not value content from family and friends as much as they did a decade ago. Short-form videos are the graphite rackets of social media, using AI-driven algorithms to blast entertainment at you from third-party creators.

It’s essential to consider whether this appeal is the best use of the FTC’s limited resources. “This is a very poor use of the FTC’s prosecutorial discretion to spend thousands, if not millions, more of American taxpayers’ money on a case that was always a loser,” said Joe Coniglio, director of antitrust and innovation policy at the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation.

Under former FTC Chair Lina Khan, many wondered if the agency was “trying to win by losing.” A House Judiciary Committee investigation revealed that staff saw her litigation priorities as a set up for failure to prove the need for legislative reform.

It’s also worth wondering what the current FTC’s motivations are. Matt Stoller, whose American Economic Liberties Project largely championed Khan’s agenda, posits that the appeal might be “simply an attempt to extort concessions from Meta.”

Regardless of what motivations may be underlying the decision to appeal, the FTC’s antitrust case against Meta was doomed by its own obsolescence from the start.

The FTC should learn from the great Björn Borg. Leave the wooden racket at home.