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Investing.com – Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) was trading higher in Tuesday’s premarket trading following a federal judge’s dismissal of the antitrust lawsuits against the company filed by the U.S. government and most states.
The shares looked set to extend the previous day’s 4.2% gains that the judgement brought about, albeit the 0.4% gain in premarket suggested that the stock’s near-term momentum has faded somewhat.
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg said the Federal Trade Commission’s lawsuit was “legally insufficient” because it didn’t plead enough allegations to support claims of Facebook exercising a monopoly. According to the judge, FTC’s arguments lacked a metric to calculate FB’s dominant share.
The judge gave 30 days to the Commission to file an amended lawsuit.
The judge also dismissed a separate case brought by 46 states in its entirety, mostly because the attorneys general waited too long to bring their claims.
The rulings dealt a blow to government efforts to pursue Big Tech giants on allegations they have unlawfully monopolized the marketplace, invading privacy of their subscribers and selling user data for commercial reasons. However, the appointment of Lina Kahn, a vocal and experienced critic of Big Tech, earlier this month to head the FTC has been taken by many as a sign that regulators are likely to keep up, and even intensify, the pressure on the biggest winners of the Internet age.
