The Federal Trade Commission accused Meta of wanting to monopolize the virtual reality sector after the company said it wanted to acquire Within, a fitness app.
The Federal Trade Commission or the US Federal Trade Commission sued Meta on Wednesday to prevent the acquisition of Within Unlimited. The company, operating in the virtual reality sector, aroused the interest of Meta because it created an application called "Supernatural", to do physical exercise in the metaverse.
According to Lina Khan, president of FTC, that is the American antitrust, the block was placed in order to prevent the Mark Zuckerberg company from exercising a monopoly in technology sector of the metaverse.
In fact, those who denounced the incident argue that the Mark Zuckerberg company could become too powerful in this sector, depriving other market operators the possibility of compete.
This is not the first time that Meta has acquired a giant in the technology sector: in the past it has already happened with Instagram and Whatsapp. The company is gradually trying to impose its hegemony also in the metaverse, but the regulatory bodies are committed to preventing this from happening.
This block comes at a difficult historical moment for Meta and for its founder, in fact the news of a decrease in the profit of the company by 36% in the last quarter. The cause is to be found in several factors although the main one seems to be the growth vertical popularity of TikTok.
