FTC sues to block Meta from ‘owning entire metaverse’

FTC Bureau of Competition Deputy Director John Newman said, "Instead of competing on the merits, Meta is trying to buy its way to the top," and "Meta already owns a best-selling virtual reality fitness app, and it had the capabilities to compete even more closely with Within’s popular Supernatural app."

According to Decrypt.com, Meta is the biggest company in the virtual reality market and the FTC believes that the company's purchase of Within Unlimited would enable them to get one step closer to entire control the VR business landscape.

"This is an illegal acquisition," Newman said, "and we will pursue all appropriate relief."

Meta is the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. According to CNBC, critics say the company had been violating antitrust laws well before their attempted purchase of Within Unlimited, notably when Facebook acquired Instagram and WhatsApp to help propel the corporation to its mega status.

Meta makes the popular Quest 2 headset, and the FTC said their purchase of Within Unlimited would stifle VR fitness competition from independent studios by owning the leading app as well as top hardware.

In a statement, a Meta spokesperson said that the case "is based on ideology and speculation, not evidence. The idea that this acquisition would lead to anticompetitive outcomes in a dynamic space with as much entry and growth as online and connected fitness is simply not credible."

Some speculate that the metaverse is the natural progression of the internet, but as The Post Millennial wrote in 2021, it's also a new method for human beings to lie to themselves, as they can create fictitious versions of themselves in VR as their corporal bodies could exist in a dire state.

Virtual reality also would make it so children "won't be able to tell fact from fiction when it comes to the relationships they will form and thus will fall victim" to the evil of "grooming and trafficking."