Facebook is facing two major antitrust lawsuits filed by the U.S. government and 48 states.

Both lawsuits allege that Facebook monopolizes social media by illegally stifling competition when it acquires potential rivals. Facebook acquired photo-sharing platform Instagram in 2012 for $1 billion and chat service WhatsApp in 2014 for $19 billion. They are now three of the world's most popular social media and messaging apps. Facebook's total valuation as a company exceeds $800 billion.

In the lawsuit, state and Federal Trade Commission officials are seeking an injunction to force Facebook to sell its assets, including Instagram and WhatsApp, and to seek prior approval for future transactions. [For nearly a decade, Facebook has used its dominance and monopoly power to crush smaller rivals, eradicate competition, and all at the expense of everyday users," said New York Attorney General Letitia James, who led the states' investigations. [Personal social networking is] central to the lives of millions of Americans. Facebook's attempts to entrench and maintain its monopoly deny consumers the benefits of competition." Our goal is to roll back Facebook's anti-competitive practices and restore competition so that innovation and free competition can flourish."

CEO Mark Zuckerberg previously called the company's dissolution an "existential crisis." And the Twitter account of the company's communications department condemned the decision.

"Years after the FTC approved our acquisition, the government now wants a do-over with no regard for the impact its precedent will have on the broader business community or the people who choose our products every day," the company tweeted.

In a lengthy statement posted this evening (December 9), Facebook accused the FTC and the participating attorney general of practicing "revisionist history."

The legal action comes on the heels of increased scrutiny of Facebook and big tech in general; the FTC previously investigated Facebook's data practices after a 2017 scandal involving Cambridge Analytica, forcing the tech giant to pay $5 billion in penalties .

Google faces its own antitrust lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice and 11 states. Apple paid $113 million to settle the "battery-gate" issue, and the European Union is investigating the company's App Store and its mobile payment service, Apple Pay. In addition, a major congressional report recently found that major tech companies exercise "monopoly power" and condemned their anti-competitive practices.