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Facebook Inc. CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on “Breaking the News: Censorship, Suppression, and the 2020 Election” on Nov. 17.
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As Facebook Inc. girds for an antitrust lawsuit from the Federal Trade Commission any day, a group of 20 to 30 state attorneys general is reportedly readying a suit of its own against the social-media giant.
Timing of the AG suit, which could come as early as next week, was reported by CNBC on Thursday. The state AGs, led by Letitia James of New York, and the FTC have been investigating Facebook FB, -1.56% since 2019.
News of another imminent lawsuit sent Facebook shares down 1.5% in late-morning trading Thursday.
Facebook declined to comment.
It remains unclear what a potential lawsuit will cover, but news reports and various congressional probes indicate it will be over Facebook’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp.
In October, the House Judiciary subcommittee issued a report on antitrust that focused on Facebook’s internal thinking around those acquisitions, including internal messages that apparently show Facebook felt threatened by Instagram’s growth.
The 449-page report concluded that Big Tech — namely, Facebook, Alphabet Inc.’s GOOGL, -0.21% GOOG, -0.16% Google, Amazon.com Inc. AMZN, -0.18% and Apple Inc. AAPL, -0.14% — poses a grave threat to markets that might require breaking them up and limiting their acquisitions.
Read more: Congress should consider breaking up Big Tech and limiting acquisitions, House report says
An action against Facebook in the coming days would mark the second time a major tech company has been sued by government officials. In October, the Justice Department officially charged Google.
“Google is a monopolist in the general search services, search advertising, and general search text advertising markets,” according to the Justice Department’s complaint, filed in federal court in Washington, D.C.
Read more: Google officially charged with antitrust by Justice Department
Google has strongly denied the charges.
