As Facebook Inc (FB) fights off a monopoly lawsuit charged by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), another predicament hits the company as photo app Phhhoto has filed an antitrust lawsuit against the tech giant claiming that it has cloned their app and ruined their business.

The makers of the app, Champ Bennett, Omar Elsayed, and Russell Armand, founded the app back in 2014 and Mark Zuckerberg was one of its first users.

The trio claims that Zuckerberg not only downloaded the app but also used it to click a burst mode photo and posted it. They claimed that the app also has other Facebook executives in their list as well.

The suit claims that Facebook and Instagram then created a clone that does the same job and then used the market share to get the other app to fall behind in the race.

According to the New York Times, a Meta spokesperson denied the allegations and said, “This suit is without merit and we will defend ourselves vigorously.”

The suit also explained how the Facebook executive, Bryan Hurren, tagged Phhhoto along for a proposed integration that never happened and suddenly the app, which was already integrated with Instagram, was removed from Instagram.

The suit claims, “Hurren explained that Instagram was apparently upset that Phhhoto was growing in users through its relationship with Instagram.”

Due to this, the app shut down back in 2017 and the suit puts the entire blame on the social media mogul.

“The actions of Facebook and Instagram destroyed Phhhoto as a viable business and ruined the company’s prospects for investment.”

 - dpa