On Monday, e-commerce platform eBay requested that a US judge block Meta’s bid for testimony from an eBay corporate official, reported Reuters. This comes as the social media giant works to obtain information from its rivals in order to develop a defense against the Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust lawsuit.
In a federal court filing in San Francisco, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, the law firm representing eBay, remarked that MetaTech is demanding confidential business information about eBay’s privacy policies and data retention that does not relate to the FTC’s monopoly claims.
The dispute concerning the issuance of a subpoena is yet another example of Meta’s efforts to acquire information from other organizations and social media outlets in case a potential court battle with the FTC occurs next year.
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Meta has faced some resistance from other companies that said its demands for information were too broad or invasive. In November, a judge ruled Sequoia Capital could not quash subpoenas from Meta seeking information about how the venture capital firm analyzed the photo-sharing site Instagram and the messaging service WhatsApp before Meta bought them.
“Meta’s discovery gluttony confirms its request of eBay is not worthy of the burden Meta seeks to impose,” eBay’s lawyers told the California court. “The breadth of the subpoena,” they said, “is alarming.”
A Meta spokesperson said in a statement that the company is “seeking information from companies with which we compete or which we believe have information relating to the FTC’s claims.”
