A US judge denies the FTC's bid to stop Meta's acquisition of Within, rejecting the regulator's concerns of the deal reducing competition in the AR/VR market
This loss ends an eighteen-month run in which the FTC kept narrowing its own case: after an earlier complaint was tossed for lack of evidence, the agency won permission to proceed with its amended monopoly suit against Meta, then asked the judge to let it drop several allegations about anticompetitive effects in the VR fitness app market ahead of trial.
The ruling matters because Within was the regulator's test case for blocking a large platform from buying its way into a nascent market — here, VR fitness apps — before dominance is provable, rather than challenging an existing monopoly.
First-order effects
Meta is free to close the Within acquisition on the timeline it chooses, with the judge having rejected the competition concerns the FTC raised about the AR/VR fitness space.
The FTC faces an immediate fork: decide quickly whether to appeal the federal-court loss or fall back on pursuing the deal challenge through an internal administrative proceeding.
Second-order effects
With the injunction denied, the FTC's remaining administrative track becomes the only lever left, meaning Meta integrates Within while still operating under a live, if weakened, enforcement threat.
The court's demand for more concrete evidence of harm hands other large-platform acquirers a template: litigate through the preliminary-injunction stage and buy time in fast-moving categories where market structure is still forming.
Third-order effects
If judges continue to require demonstrated competitive harm in still-emerging markets, potential-competition theories lose force as a check on platform acquisitions, shifting the burden back onto agencies to prove consumer injury before a category has matured.
Enforcement pressure migrates toward conduct-based remedies — policing how acquired products like a VR fitness app are integrated and priced — rather than blocking the deals themselves.
The trend: US antitrust efforts to stop Big Tech from acquiring nascent-market rivals are colliding with courts that want harder evidence of competitive harm than early-stage deals can supply.
Same for ‘actual potential competition’ “Accordingly, the FTC has not demonstrated a likelihood of ultimate success as to its Section 7 claim arising from perceived potential competition.”
However, FTC has failed on other aspects of ‘potential competition’ theory, he finds. Specifically, he considers whether Meta had “available feasible means” for entering the market.
A redacted version of the court decision denying the FTC's injunction against Meta's acquisition of Supernatural just got published. I have along thread with a bunch of interesting nuggets over on Mastodon https://sfba.social/...
However, the evidence does not support a finding that the VR dedicated fitness app market exhibits the characteristics or desirable behaviors of a competitive market."
But one of the most newsworthy revelations is that Meta was looking to buy another VR fitness app, and then pivoted to Supernatural when it got wind that Apple was looking to buy it.
“[T]he objective evidence in the record is insufficient to support a finding that it was ‘reasonably probable’ Meta would enter the relevant market for purposes of the perceived potential competition doctrine.”
womp womp. Court order on FTC vs Meta posted to the docket because it's Friday night. Sixty-five pages. Goodnight moon. https://storage.courtlistener.com/ ... https://twitter.com/...
“We are pleased that the Court has denied the FTC's motion to block our acquisition of Within. This deal will bring pro-competitive benefits to the ecosystem and spur innovation that will benefit people, developers, and the VR space more broadly.