Facebook’s lobbyists have been working Capitol Hill with a new message: Our competition, they say, isn’t just Twitter, Snapchat and TikTok. It’s newspapers, television, videogames and even online message boards.
That’s what Facebook lobbyists and lawyers have argued in multiple closed-door briefings with staffers in both the House and the Senate. But 10 months into a House of Representatives antitrust investigation of big tech companies, congressional staffers remain deeply skeptical of Facebook’s efforts to expand the definition of the social media market to include every app or media source available online, people familiar with the matter said.
