FTC Opposes Facebook's Collaboration Plans For Instagram & WhatsApp

FTC Opposes Facebook’s Collaboration Plans For Instagram & WhatsApp

As per the reports published by The Wall Street Journal and New York Times, the U.S. FTC (Federal Trade Commission) is reportedly urging Facebook to drop the plans of integrating Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp. The news has come to light following reports of an antitrust investigation being conducted by the FTC on Facebook, as the policies of the global leading social networking platform are anticompetitive. The FTC initiated its investigation after Facebook revealed its plan to unify the technical bases of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. This collaboration would let its 2.7 Billion users transfer encrypted messages from one platform to another without any sort of restrictions.

The commission’s major concern is that the acquisition strategy being used by Facebook, such as the purchase of Instagram and WhatsApp, has significantly alleviated the social networking competition. The commission considers if Facebook integrates all its acquired apps into its own infrastructure, it would become very difficult to rupture the collaboration.

Last summer, Facebook unveiled the FTC investigation. After that, the U.S. Justice Department, Congress, and other federal agencies have also started investigating the potential anticompetitive conduct. Consequently, Facebook reportedly junked the thought of purchasing the Houseparty chat app.

On a similar note, Reuters has organized a new 45-minute online course for journalists, in which they would be taught about how to spot manipulated audio clips, images, and videos. While deepfakes are apparently a key module of the course, there is also brief guidance on how to identify authentic media that’s been co-opted so that it reveals an entirely different tale.

Axios reported that Facebook is supporting Reuters in making this course available at the global level as a part of the Facebook Journalism Project, for which the social networking giant is investing “six figures.” The provider is planning to provide the course material into at least 12 languages, including English, Japanese, French, German, Arabic, and Spanish.

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