FTC Trial Reveals Meta Disregard for National Security, Innovation

For years, Meta has claimed that it carefully manages access to its platform’s data to benefit users and developers alike. But internal documents from its Federal Trade Commission trial paint a different picture—one of strategic exclusion and economic sabotage cloaked in user protection.

Specifically, documents reveal that Meta has been weaponizing its application programming interface, or API, to crush American competitors while maintaining an open door for foreign hostile nations—a double standard that undermines both U.S. innovation and national security.

An API is like a digital bridge that allows different software systems to communicate with each other and enables apps and services to share data easily with one another. For tech startups and businesses, API access to major platforms like Facebook is often essential for survival, as it connects them to wider markets.

But the lack of that API access can prove deadly. In 2013, Circle, a promising social networking startup, was gaining traction—that is, until Facebook terminated Circle’s API access, saying that Circle was spamming users. Yet internal emails show a different motivation: an attempt to keep Circle from competing with Facebook.

Path, another social networking competitor, met a similar fate in April 2013, when Facebook abruptly cut off its API access. According to court documents, Path’s growth “slowed significantly” afterward. Similarly, Vine, Twitter’s short-form video service, was denied API access after a couple of days which could have accelerated its growth.

The pattern holds firm. Throughout 2013, Facebook systematically blocked API access to multiple mobile messaging apps, with internal communications stating they would not communicate with developers “in any way about these restrictions.”

Facebook acknowledges the detrimental effect that restricting API access has. An internal slide deck in early 2014 states that changing API access would be “killing prospects of many startups.”

The message was clear: If you threaten Meta’s dominance, you’ll be digitally excommunicated and your business will die.

Yet while American innovators were being systematically cut off, Meta maintained an open and permissive approach to developers from hostile foreign nations.

Before the 2014 API change, over 240,000 software developers in hostile countries could access Facebook users’ data. That included nearly 90,000 developers in China, over 42,000 in Russia, 76,000 in Vietnam, and thousands in Iran, Cuba, and North Korea.

More specifically, Chinese developers—including those from Huawei—could access users’ profile data, photos, and even private messages.

Facebook’s API structure was so permissive that developers only needed consent from one user to access that person’s entire network of friends’ data. A single compromised account could expose hundreds of connections.

And Meta knew about these risks. Internal documents show the company was aware that foreign developers could exploit this access for intelligence gathering and espionage. Yet the company continued providing broad access to actors from adversarial nations while simultaneously choking off American competitors under the banner of user protection.

Although a court opinion has stated that Meta restricting API access from competitors doesn’t constitute an illegal “refusal to deal” under antitrust law, legal permissibility doesn’t equal ethical behavior. Meta’s selective enforcement puts foreign countries first and America second.

The broader implications extend beyond individual company grievances. APIs enable interoperability, increase efficiency, and foster innovation by allowing new services to build upon existing platforms.

But when dominant companies like Meta use API access as a competitive moat rather than a bridge to innovation, they effectively tax the entire U.S. ecosystem’s growth potential. Even worse, Meta’s actions aid U.S. enemies.

If protecting users were truly the priority, the company would have implemented consistent standards choking off security threats alongside competitive threats. Instead, Meta created a system that protected its market position while leaving users genuinely vulnerable to foreign manipulation and data harvesting.

The solution isn’t complex regulation of every API decision, but rather consistency and transparency in how these powerful gatekeepers operate. When platforms achieve the scale and influence of Meta’s ecosystem, their infrastructure decisions effectively become public infrastructure decisions, affecting innovation, competition, and security across entire industries. Congress and federal enforcement agencies should hold these companies with monopolistic reach accountable to their own standards.

Meta’s API practices reveal a company that views user and developer protection as a convenient excuse rather than a genuine commitment. Until that changes, we should view Meta’s claims with the skepticism they deserve. After all, a company that protected Chinese developers’ access while blocking American innovators has already shown us where its true loyalties lie.

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