After winning an antitrust suit filed by the Federal Trade Commission, Social Media Giant Facebook saw a 4% surge in its shares, increasing its market value to $1 trillion.

The court’s dismissal of the lawsuit, which focused on the market’s monopolization by the tech giant, was based on the grounds of the federal complaint being “legally insufficient”.  The aim of the suit was to force Facebook to break up with its subsidiaries, Instagram and Whatsapp, by selling them. The Zuckerberg-created company bought each of the companies back in 2012 and 2014 for $1 billion and $9 billion respectively.

This comes amidst growing scrutiny over the massive economic and political influence Social media companies are having, as well as their controversial censoring and mismanagement of news publications under the guise of being “platforms” and not “publishers”, thus shielding them from various legislations aimed at regulating any defiance of “free speech".

With this new financial milestone, Facebook has now joined the ranks of four other companies which have reached this value early on: Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet. It is important to note that the tech giants are all located in Silicon Valley-San Francisco, reaffirming again the financial dominance of these companies over the market.