The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is arguing that the proposed acquisition by Meta Platforms of VR content producer Within Unlimited should be stopped. Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer of Meta Platforms, will testify in this case.
The FTC identified 18 witnesses it intended to examine in a court filing submitted on Friday (October 28) to the US District Court for the Northern District of California. Mark Zuckerberg, Chris Milk, CEO of Within, and Andrew Bosworth, CTO of Meta, were among the witnesses.
They were names in a list of witnesses that the defendants Meta and Within provided on Friday.
The court filing can ask Zuckerberg about the Facebook parent company’s VR business strategy and its plans to help third-party developers. He will also have to defend the company’s purchase of Within.
In a lawsuit filed in July, the FTC said that if Meta bought Within, it would “tend to create a monopoly” in the market for fitness apps that work with virtual reality.
The governing body said that the merger would “significantly reduce competition or tend to create a monopoly” in that market.
The FTC’s conclusory, speculative, and conflicting charges, according to Meta, “do not convincely plead any facts to prove that any supposed market for VR Deliberate Fitness apps is’ oligopolistic’ as to either behavior or structure.”
