Last week, Federal Trade Commission lawyers made clumsy arguments when they refiled their antitrust case against Facebook. This week, it’s Facebook’s turn to look dumb and arrogant in its dealings with the FTC and the public.
When Facebook acquired Giphy—a provider of animated GIFs—in May 2020, it structured the roughly $400 million deal in order to avoid a law requiring companies to report deals of a certain size to U.S. antitrust authorities, Bloomberg reported. Specifically, Giphy allegedly paid dividends to its shareholders before closing the acquisition in order to lower the value of its assets.
