Former FTC Chair Lina Khan just got the last laugh. Her aggressive 2022 challenge to block Meta's $400 million acquisition of VR fitness studio Within - widely criticized as regulatory overreach at the time - now looks remarkably prescient as Meta abandons its metaverse ambitions and shutters the very app it fought so hard to acquire. The regulatory vindication arrives as Meta pulls the plug on Supernatural, proving Khan's concerns about monopolistic behavior in nascent markets weren't paranoia but prophecy.
The deal with it meme couldn't be more fitting. In 2021, when Meta announced plans to acquire Within - the independent studio behind popular VR fitness app Supernatural - the metaverse looked inevitable. Mark Zuckerberg had just renamed his entire company, losing billions chasing virtual reality's promise while releasing upgraded Quest 2 headsets and the higher-end Quest Pro.
But Lina Khan saw something else. The then-FTC chair filed suit to block the roughly $400 million deal, arguing Meta was systematically buying potential competitors in VR fitness rather than competing on its own merits. Tech industry observers and Meta defenders dismissed the challenge as regulatory overreach - how could you block an acquisition in a market that barely existed?
Fast forward to today, and Khan's foresight looks uncomfortably accurate. Meta is now shutting down Supernatural, the very app it spent hundreds of millions to acquire and years in court defending. The closure comes as the company dramatically retreats from its metaverse bet, vinddicating exactly the kind of forward-looking antitrust enforcement Khan championed.
The FTC's original complaint laid out a pattern. Meta had already acquired multiple VR studios including Beat Games (maker of Beat Saber) and was systematically consolidating the nascent virtual reality market. Khan argued the company was leveraging its dominant position in VR hardware - Quest headsets controlled an estimated 80% of the consumer VR market - to corner adjacent software markets before real competition could emerge.
