The FTC v. Meta cases are chasing the ghost of Facebook

This month, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Meta are fighting in federal court over the Commission’s recent lawsuit against Meta. The lawsuit alleges that Meta’s purchase of small virtual reality fitness app Within Unlimited would prevent future competition in the VR fitness space.

Given the time and resources the commission is investing in the case, one would expect Meta to crush the competition like an unstoppable machine.

However, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently announced the company’s steepest round of layoffs ever, laying off 13% of the company’s employees amid an onslaught of painful, widespread hiring freezes and layoffs across the tech sector.

Meta has lost 70% of its value this year, for a total market cap loss of over $730 billion. It’s a testament to how difficult it is to stay in pole position in an environment as volatile as social networking, especially when it comes to new generations of customers. It’s difficult to justify Meta’s so-called “dominance” in this context, as the FTC attempts in its lawsuit.

It appears that regulators in Washington are more focused than ever on investigating short-lived allegations of anticompetitive behavior by tech companies — including Meta — while many tech companies are already struggling to survive. The FTC is chasing ghosts and ignoring the realities of the marketplace and consumer behavior.

The FTC’s dual mandate requires the agency to both promote competition and protect consumers from unfair commercial practices. And while that mission couldn’t be more important at this point, the agency’s two separate cases against Meta and their crusade against Big Tech fall short of those goals.

Instead of bringing simple cases against obviously bad actors, the FTC seems to be twisting itself to find a reason to prosecute Meta. There is already a pending case challenging Meta’s acquisitions of Whatsapp and Instagram, dating back eight and 10 years respectively.

However, the unchecked rise of TikTok, which poses huge privacy risks as China can reportedly collect Americans’ data, shows how badly the FTC’s lawsuit has aged.

In its case against Meta’s purchase of Within Unlimited, the Commission has already had to drop its claim that Meta even competes with Within. Instead, it had to double down on a perceived potential unfair competition lawsuit that had been unsuccessful in court in the past.

According to our preliminary poll, only 1 percent of voters prioritize tech regulation as a public policy issue for Congress to address. And when we asked constituents about the regulatory priorities for technology, they focused on privacy and security — not competition and antitrust.

Regulators have a responsibility to pay attention to what is happening in the market and who they are targeting. With these lawsuits, the FTC is fighting an old, conceited version of Facebook, not today’s meta, locked in a competitive dogfight for its future survival.

The FTC’s pursuit of meta will ultimately limit innovation and deliver no benefits to consumers — not to mention it’s a poor use of the agency’s finite resources. The FTC should focus on fighting practices that cause real consumer harm, rather than going after companies whose future growth is far from assured.

As the tech industry anticipates this tipping point, so must regulators. The agency would be better off focusing its efforts on pursuing targeted strategies that address the consumer issues that actually need solving, rather than attacking ghosts.

Adam Kovacevich is Founder and CEO of the Chamber of Progress, a tech industry political coalition promoting the progressive future of technology. Meta is one of the corporate partners of the Chamber of Progress.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com comments are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of wealth.