Suspicions are rising over the death of Meta’s short-lived on-demand video service Facebook Watch, as an ongoing antitrust lawsuit against the tech giant is painting Netflix as a prime suspect behind a sea-change in Meta’s video strategy. With the release last week of unredacted letters related to a December 2020 lawsuit against Meta from a gaggle of advertisers, new claims bring to light why Meta suddenly slashed $750 million off Facebook Watch’s budget in 2018. The accusations are damning. Meta effectively starved the service upon birth, leading to the termination of all original programming and the official shut down of its dedicated app in 2023. The fall of a short-form content video platform in itself does not hint at foul…