As Meta continues its legal battle against the US Federal Trade Commission, the company is also trying to clean up what it calls a “technical deficiency” that led to the possible revelation of redacted material presented in court.
Shortly after Meta's lawyers' opening arguments on Monday, the social media giant sent out an email to reporters containing a synopsis of the company's main points, along with an 88-page PDF of the slide-deck used in the courtroom.
Several portions of the slide-deck were redacted, which is not unusual in a trial of this size.
On Tuesday, however, The Verge, a tech news site, stated that the redactions could easily be removed, though it also noted that they were not necessarily covering anything compromising or secret, at least to the lay individual.
Later in the day, a member of Meta's public affairs team emailed recipients of the slide-deck PDF and asked that the document and any copies be destroyed and not reshared.
“The version you received included redactions that we now understand can be manipulated to reveal the underlying information, which was inadvertent,” read the email from Meta's public affairs team at the end of the second day of the high-stakes trial.
“We have taken immediate steps to correct this technical deficiency and are providing you with a new and corrected version of the slide deck,” the email continued, referring to a correctly redacted version of Meta's opening arguments against the FTC that was attached.
Also in the email, Meta's public affairs team included a signed protective order from Judge James Boasberg that seeks to prevent and limit the dissemination of potentially sensitive information.
“Our legal department has instructed me to send to you the protective order that covers this issue, and to request that you acknowledge and agree to be bound by Appendix A to the protective order, attached here,” it read.
Depending on how documents are composed, saved and exported as PDFs, redacting information can appear simple, but the process can be more complicated than many realise. PDF viewing apps also differ in how they handle the documents, making it sometimes difficult to ensure that redactions are secure.
In some cases, importing PDFs, and even copying and pasting the content, can reveal redacted information.
The incident emphasises the complexities of such a high-stakes trial, with even the most sophisticated and seasoned technology companies such as Meta occasionally stumbling when using the digital tools that have become so prominent in our daily lives.
The first two-days of the trial have generated significant media interest. The Washington district courtroom was packed and the spillover media room full of reporters watching as Meta's founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg took to the witness box to defend his company against what the FTC alleges in anticompetitive behaviour.
Throughout the trial, which could last as long as three months, executives and engineers from Snapchat, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and others are expected to be called as witnesses.
Meta's former chief executive Sheryl Sandberg is expected to take the witness box on Wednesday, and Instagram head Adam Mosseri is expected to be eventually called by the FTC.
At the heart of the federal government's arguments is Meta's purchase of Instagram in 2012 and its acquisition of WhatsApp in 2014.
The FTC's lawyer, Daniel Matheson, spent two days questioning Mr Zuckerberg about the acquisitions, implying that Meta bought the companies rather than competing against them. At one point, the Meta founder implied that ideally, Meta would have preferred that its own efforts at building something similar to Instagram had come to fruition instead.
“One billion dollars is very expensive,” he said of the Instagram acquisition.
If found guilty of anticompetitive behaviour, Meta could be forced to divest from Instagram and WhatsApp, which would be a major blow for Meta's ad revenue and market dominance.
“This case is a grab bag of FTC theories at war with the facts and the law,” Meta's lawyer said during opening arguments. “Meta is not a monopolist, and Meta’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp were pro-competitive, producing extraordinary efficiencies.”
