The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has filed a complaint to block Meta from acquiring Within, the company behind the virtual reality fitness app Supernatural. The FTC claims Meta bought Within to absorb competition in the fitness market, where it already owned the similar app Beat Saber. The complaint follows months of speculation that regulators might intervene in Meta’s growing dominance of the consumer VR market, as well as an FTC probe reportedly opened in December of 2021.

“Meta in recent years has set its sights on building, and ultimately controlling, a VR ‘metaverse,’” the FTC’s complaint says. It alleges that Meta saw fitness as a “killer app” market that would help it dominate the nascent VR medium, and Within threatened the...

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