Facebook asks judge to dismiss antitrust lawsuits in its '1st legal salvo'

After getting slammed last year with major antitrust lawsuits, Facebook is looking to get them dismissed and denying the monopoly allegations against it.

The company on Wednesday said it has filed motions to dismiss antitrust lawsuits brought both by the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general. Facebook argued the FTC hasn't made a "plausible antitrust case," has failed to "plausibly allege that Facebook has monopoly power," and hasn't "plausibly alleged unlawful exclusionary conduct."

Facebook also claimed the state attorneys general lack standing to bring the case and "waited far too long" to take action targeting the company's acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram that were previously cleared by the FTC.

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"You only have to look at your phone to know that the government’s assertion that Facebook monopolizes 'personal social networking services' doesn’t make sense," a Facebook spokesperson said, per Politico. "The government ignores these realities and attempts to rewrite history with its unprecedented lawsuit."

This was Facebook's "first legal salvo" since it was hit with the antitrust lawsuits in December, The Wall Street Journal noted. Facebook was accused in the lawsuits of a "years-long course of anticompetitive conduct," and state attorneys general asked the court to consider requiring Facebook to divest WhatsApp and Instagram. At the time, The Washington Post described the lawsuits as the "most significant political and legal threats to Facebook in its more than 16-year history."

As far as whether Facebook's motion could actually be successful, though, Politico notes that it's "much less common for suits by federal or state enforcers to be thrown out in the initial stages" than with private antitrust cases. Indeed, the Journal writes that to convince a judge to toss the lawsuits before they proceed to trial, Facebook would have to "meet a high legal standard." Still, Politico adds that such motions to dismiss can sometimes "add as much as an additional year" to the litigation process.