Did you know Instagram and Facebook Users See Fewer Friend Posts as Meta Defends Itself in Court

 

Tech giant Meta is working on strengthening its antitrust battle with the FTC after being accused of monopoly behavior by taking on Instagram and WhatsApp.

The company has chosen a new route of showing less friend-focused material on Instagram and Facebook. The news comes just as the company was forced to appear in court for the trial. The tech giant’s opening statements had a lot to do with how there was a fall in time consumed for witnessing content from friends.

The tech giant adds that nearly 7% of the time spent on the app this year is related to viewing material from friends. So if you happen to be noticing a change, then it’s not just you, it’s the app.

The FTC wants Meta to merge and allow WhatsApp and Instagram to function as independent entities to allow competition to flourish and monopoly practices of the tech world to end. If that does happen, it could be a major loss for Meta and the most aggressive approach rolled out against Big Tech.

Meta continues to argue that it did nothing wrong and continues to face a serious amount of competition from apps like TikTok and YouTube. They similarly argued about how it’s not anti-competitive behavior.

Meta argued that users are not pushing content to their friends list on Facebook and Instagram like they once used to in the past. Today, Facebook is more linked to providing entertainment for all and a place for bigger and broader discoveries.

It shared through a slide how the time spent seeing content shared by friends has fallen dramatically. At one point in time, it was just 22% on Facebook and half as much on Instagram. Now, it’s dropped to just 7%. This has a lot to do with the company focusing more on the likes of short-form content and reels. It also alters how recommendations are made to users.

Meta has made a major public showing of trying to reverse the trend of seeing fewer friends' posts. The company shared in March another Friends tab that only rolls out posts and stories, and reels from users’ circles. There are no recommendations or distractions from the algorithm to take into consideration. As per the CEO, the goal is to bring back the charm of the old Facebook.