Meta was summoned to Washington to defend its Instagram and Whatsapp acquisitions during a trial presented by the Federal Trade American Commission, which alleys that agreements were part of a monopolistic strategy. The FTC wants META to deposit these platforms to create a playground more level on the social applications market.
Meta, which did not only happen by Facebook, bought the Instagram photo sharing application in 2012 and the WhatsApp messaging platform in 2014. He maintains that acquisitions fueled the growth of applications and that there is little evidence that they would have evolved into competitors viable by themselves.
Wednesday, the meta-PDG Mark Zuckerberg argued that it had never intended to stifle competition by acquisition, according to live reports The penis. “The intention intended to stop offering or stopping making Instagram good? Absolutely not,” he said. His hope was simply to scale the user base of the application, but he had done what 2018 had done.
Zuckerberg and the Meta team stressed that the company had always faced – and continues to face – rivals while building Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp, including platforms like Tiktok and Google Plus.
Day 1: Monday April 14
The most important points discussed on the first day were centered on Tiktok. Although the FTC wants to prove that META has monopolized the social applications market which “connect friends and family”, it does not include Tiktok on this market.
Meta argues that the Chinese video sharing application should be considered a viable competitor who has a comparable market value, according to The Verge. For example, when Tiktok was prohibited in the United States for a day in January 2025, Facebook and Instagram for 20% and 17%, respectively. If Zuckerberg can prove that the definition of the FTC market is too close, Meta could win the case.
The courts also learned that in February 2012, Zuckerberg planned to acquire Instagram but did not make significant modifications to avoid creating “a hole on the market so that someone else can fill”. Nevertheless, according to The Verge, the CEO said that he had never taken this road.
Day 2: Tuesday April 15
Zuckerberg was invited to explain why, in an exchange of February 2012, he agreed with the suggestion of the CFO David Ebersman that the Instagram acquisition could help “neutralize a potential competitor”, according to The Verge. On the stand, he said that the purchase of a company would intrinsically lead to a competitor removed from the market.
He also admitted that he could have built a new application to compete with Instagram, but “if he would have succeeded or not … is a question of speculation”, according to the Bbc. In an email sent before the acquisition of Instagram, Zuckerberg said that Meta was “so far behind” in the photo sharing space and that the prospect of late was “really frightening”, by Mashable.
Nevertheless, his company began to build the Facebook camera of the competing product, after, in 2011, he was more focused on the technology of the Instagram camera than its social potential. Zuckerberg then realized that his application would not make up for Instagram, so he deleted it and continued the acquisition.
In court, the CEO admitted that he was “worried” other messaging applications such as WeChat of “largely competition with (META)” before she acquires Whatsapp. The declaration was in response to the messages of January 2013, in which Zuckerberg suggested “Block (ING) WeChat, Kakao and Line Ads” because they “try to build social networks and replace us”, according to the rod.
The second day of the trial informed several of Zuckerberg's ideas to extend his business, which has never materialized. One bought Snapchat, now Snap, for a $ 6 billion project. The Facebook founder was particularly worried when Snapchat published stories, saying in the internal messages of 2014 that he was “now more competitor for Instagram and the news feed than ever for messaging”.
He also planned to create a Facebook flow that shows only advertisements, deleting all Facebook friends from all users to find his “cultural relevance” and transfer Instagram to his own business. The latter pre-replies to the regulatory examination of his company, as in a 2018 email, he admitted that “most companies work better after their separation”.
Day 3: Wednesday April 16
Zuckerberg said that “Facebook growth had slowed down considerably” when Tiktok became popular, reiterating how the social media platform is not the only dominant market player, according to The Verge.
He also did not plan to acquire the precursor of Tiktok, musical.ly, because he did not want to face “any link they had with China”. Bytedance subsequently acquired it and became a major competitor, said the CEO.
Zuckerberg has recognized that competition is now from YouTube, because the “richer media forms” as the video have become more attractive for digital creators, by CNN. However, the platform is not considered a competitor on the market that the FTC has defined.
The FTC has argued that Facebook has acquired a disproportionate influence of “network effects”, because its large basis of sustained user encourages new users to join and existing users to stay, because a large part of their social circle is already on the platform.
However, Zuckerberg argued that the effects of the network are not only beneficial. He explained that users can possibly see their flows dominated by the content of people they no longer care, which makes the platform obsolete. This is why he considered resetting the lists of friends of each.
Regarding WhatsApp, Zuckerberg said that the motivation behind his acquisition was never to hinder his growth and prevent him from questioning Meta's domination, because he knew that the founders did not intend to do so. After having known them, he discovered that they “lowered” the addition of features that could make the application more competitive and finally had to persuade them to implement these changes.
Former Chief of the Operation Sheryl Sandberg came on the stand towards the end of the session and said that it had been shaken when Google Plus was launched in 2011, noting how it was “almost an exact replica” of Facebook.
