Federal regulators on Wednesday took legal action to block Facebook parent Meta and CEO Mark Zuckerberg from acquiring virtual reality company Within Unlimited and its fitness app Supernatural, asserting the deal would hurt competition and violate antitrust laws.

Experts said it was the Federal Trade Commission’s first legal challenge to a Big Tech merger.

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The FTC action ensures that “Facebook earns, rather than buys, its place in the emerging virtual and augmented reality sector,” Krista Brown, senior policy analyst at the American Economic Liberties Project, said in a statement. “This is the agency’s first challenge to a big tech merger, and it represents its new commitment to protecting fair competition in nascent digital markets. The effects of Facebook’s pending acquisition of Within … would reduce innovation and competition in a sector just getting off the ground.”