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Comment by badRNG | Hacker News Reader

It isn't much news (disclaimer: IANAL.)

Facebook had submitted a motion to dismiss the lawsuit. A motion to dismiss means they assume that every fact alleged by the FTC is true. You perform a motion to dismiss to say "even if everything they said is true, it still isn't even possible for them to win the lawsuit." The judge said, essentially, that if every fact the FTC alleges is true, then it is at least feasible that the FTC could have a successful lawsuit. There are two key things that this go ahead does NOT do:

1. It does not look at whether even a single alleged fact by the FTC is true

2. It does not mean that the FTC suit would be successful even if every fact is successfully proven

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This is actually not really true?

> A motion to dismiss means they assume that every fact alleged by the FTC is true.

FB actually claims that every fact is false. The motion more means, that its so evident that the claim is false that it shouldn't be litigated. (eg. you wouldn't carry a trial claiming fb was a monopoly book-seller).

> The judge said, essentially, that if every fact the FTC alleges is true, then it is at least feasible that the FTC could have a successful lawsuit.

This is true. The judge said there was doubt over the truth of the FTC allegations, but those truths could be decided in court.

Specifically, questions over market definition (key to proving monopoly) were unproven and had significant doubts.The courts rejected the suit once already over these definitions, so this is a followup that adds details... but not much details.

> FB actually claims that every fact is false

They may, but the standard for deciding a motion to dismiss is to assume every fact actually in dispute is resolved against the moving party, if they would still prevail in that case, then their motion is granted.

(Note that there is a distinction that is easy to get tripped up on between “facts” and “conclusions of law asserted as if they were facts”, and it is not unheard of for a a motion to dismiss to center around the other party providing conclusions of law without supporting facts rather than actual facts.)

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