Federal regulators asked Wednesday for Facebook to be ordered to divest its Instagram and WhatsApp messaging services as the U.S. government and 48 states and districts accused the company of abusing its market power in social networking to crush smaller competitors. The antitrust lawsuits were announced by the Federal Trade Commission and New York Attorney General Letitia James. “It’s really critically important that we block this predatory acquisition of companies and that we restore confidence to the market,” James said during a press conference announcing the lawsuit. In its lawsuit, the FTC is seeking the separation of the services from Facebook, saying Facebook has engaged in a “a systematic strategy” to eliminate its competition, including by purchasing smaller up-and-coming rivals like Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014. Facebook did not have immediate comment.

Facebook called the government actions “revisionist history” that punishes successful businesses and noted that the FTC cleared the Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions years ago. But they are the ones most frequently held up by Facebook critics as properties that should be split off. Facebook paid $1 billion for Instagram, bolstering the social network's business a month before its stock went public. A few years later, Facebook acquired WhatsApp, an encrypted messaging service, for $19 billion. Instagram now has more than 1 billion users worldwide.