The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and nearly all US states have filed two lawsuits seeking to undermine Facebook's dominant position by limiting the tech giant's ability to operate across multiple platforms.

The complaint accuses Facebook of insinuating itself into the lives of billions of people by absorbing competitors and behaving in a generally anti-competitive manner. Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and South Dakota are the only states that have not joined. The landmark antitrust lawsuit seeks to break up Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, alleging that Facebook’s acquisition of the latter two was an attempt to stifle competitors and keep consumers away from more privacy-focused alternatives.

"For nearly a decade, Facebook has enjoyed a monopoly in the personal social networking market in the United States…," the complaint states. "Facebook illegally maintains that monopoly by engaging in a buy-or-bury strategy that stifles competition and harms both users and advertisers."

Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has argued that absorbing various social media competitors allows the company to create a "competitive moat." Like medieval moats, this metaphorical barrier allows the company to dominate relatively unchallenged. You can see this strategy in the early acquisitions of both Instagram and WhatsAppm, as both apps grew in popularity.