Mark Zuckerberg has been pressing the Trump administration in a calculated effort to derail a major antitrust case before it reaches trial. The Meta CEO has made several visits to the White House since President Donald Trump returned to office, urging senior officials to intervene in the Federal Trade Commission’s lawsuit that challenges Meta’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp.
The FTC’s case, originally filed in 2020, alleges that Meta moved to acquire emerging rivals in order to neutralize competition. The agency is seeking to unwind both acquisitions, arguing they were designed to entrench Meta’s dominance in personal social networking. While Meta insists the deals improved consumer experience through integration, the trial—scheduled for April 14, 2025—could force the company to divest core assets if it loses.
Zuckerberg isn’t relying on legal arguments alone. According to The Wall Street Journal, he has encouraged Trump and key officials to frame both U.S. and European regulatory scrutiny as economically motivated and harmful to American companies. This lobbying is part of a broader push to portray global tech regulation as a trade dispute, with Meta caught in the middle.
Executive Tension and Potential Intervention
The effort may be gaining traction. FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson recently stated that he would “obey lawful orders” from the president, including a directive to withdraw the lawsuit—though he made clear this was a hypothetical scenario. His response, reported by The Verge, highlights the political pressure now surrounding the case, even as the agency retains formal independence.
Trump has already made his position known. In a February 2025 memorandum, he described EU regulatory fines as “overseas extortion” targeting U.S. tech firms. On *The Joe Rogan Experience* earlier this year, Zuckerberg echoed the sentiment, saying American companies had paid over €30 billion in fines to EU regulators over the past two decades.
The EU’s Billion-Dollar Penalty and Slowing Momentum
While the FTC trial looms, Meta also faces a parallel front in Europe. The European Commission is preparing to fine the company up to $1 billion under the Digital Markets Act (DMA) over its controversial “pay or consent” advertising model. Introduced in late 2023, the model offers users a binary choice: allow extensive data tracking or pay a monthly subscription to opt out of ads.
After pushback, Meta lowered the subscription fee from €9.99 to €5.99 in November 2024, but regulators remained skeptical. In a 2024 preliminary assessment, the Commission concluded that Meta’s ‘pay or consent’ model may not provide a real alternative in case users do not consent, thereby not achieving the objective of preventing the accumulation of personal data by gatekeepers.
Regulatory appetite for strict enforcement, however, may be waning. As reported in January, the Commission temporarily paused DMA investigations into Meta, Apple, and Google as part of a strategic review. And by March 28, EU officials were signaling plans to scale back fines in order to avoid reigniting trade tensions with the Trump administration.
Messaging Compliance under Scrutiny
Meta’s problems in Europe also include how it handles interoperability. Under DMA Article 7, messaging platforms designated as gatekeepers must allow third-party services to connect. Meta has submitted reference offers that outline its proposed technical implementation for WhatsApp and Messenger. But critics argue the approach is overly restrictive.
The XMPP Standards Foundation (XSF) issued a public letter on April 2 calling out Meta’s API-based integration model as legally fragile and unscalable. The group wrote that it amounts to “lock-in under another name” by requiring third-party developers to negotiate individual access agreements. The XSF instead advocates for adoption of the open XMPP protocol—a federated messaging standard that allows services to interoperate without centralized permission.
XMPP, which powered early versions of WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, enables decentralized messaging through open federation—similar to how email works across providers. Meta’s choice to abandon it in favor of proprietary APIs has drawn scrutiny. While Meta has begun rolling out basic features like contact import within the EU, the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) is still reviewing whether these measures meet the DMA’s legal requirements for full interoperability.
AI Copyright Issues Add Pressure
Meta’s legal exposure extends into AI as well. The company reportedly reuploaded approximately 30% of the pirated books it downloaded via BitTorrent for AI model training. These books, sourced from shadow libraries like LibGen and Z-Library, were allegedly shared back to the network—raising questions about copyright infringement.
Internal communications submitted in a U.S. court case show Meta engineers were aware of the legal risk. One staffer wrote: “Torrenting from a [Meta-owned] corporate laptop doesn’t feel right.” While BitTorrent’s architecture automatically redistributes files during download, experts cited in the report said Meta’s unusually high upload rate may have worsened the situation.
Meta has claimed its practices fall under fair use, arguing that AI training is “transformative in nature” and does not reproduce books verbatim. But redistribution of copyrighted content—even if incidental—could fall outside the scope of fair use, particularly under the U.S. DMCA and the EU AI Act.
Political Strategy Meets Regulatory Crossroads
Zuckerberg’s outreach to Trump may be part of a wider plan to manage Meta’s mounting legal threats—spanning antitrust litigation, data privacy enforcement, messaging interoperability, and copyright claims. By framing these issues as international overreach and leveraging political relationships, Meta is attempting to shift the battleground from courtrooms to diplomatic tables.
Whether that approach succeeds will become clearer in the coming weeks. The FTC’s April 14 trial remains on the calendar. The EU’s regulatory patience may be waning, but its fines haven’t disappeared. And copyright lawsuits are gaining traction on both sides of the Atlantic. For Meta, the outcome of these confrontations could reshape not just its business—but how tech power is regulated across the globe.
